Pity about That Legacy, Paul Ryan

Bummer of Birthmark, Paul

House Speaker Paul Ryan is leaving, and on the way out, he wanted a legacy.

Seeing as how the soon to be former Congressman, AKA the zombie eyed granny starver, IS the zombie eyed granny starver, he sees his legacy as finding some new and inventive way to inflict cruelty on the helpless.

So, in contravention of more than 50 years of bipartisan consensus, Paul Ryan decided to gut food stamps (SNAP) in the latest farm bill, and so he had to pass the bill without Democratic votes, and the right wing nut-jobs of the Freedom Caucus refused to back the bill, because they wanted to vote on persecuting brown people first:

A sweeping farm bill failed in the House on Friday in a blow to GOP leaders who were unable to placate conservative lawmakers demanding commitments on immigration.

The House leadership put the bill on the floor gambling it would pass despite unanimous Democratic opposition. They negotiated with members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus up to the last minutes.

But their gamble failed. The vote was 213 to 198, with 30 Republicans joining 183 Democrats in defeating the bill.

The outcome exposed what is becoming an all-out war within the House GOP over immigration, a divisive fight the Republicans did not want to have heading into midterm elections in November that will decide control of Congress.

The bill’s collapse also highlight the splits within the GOP conference that have bedeviled House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and will be certain to dog the top lieutenants in line to replace him, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.).

With moderate Republicans maneuvering to force a vote on legislation offering citizenship to some younger immigrants who arrived in the country as children, conservatives revolted. The farm bill became a bargaining chip as they lobbied leadership for a vote on a hard-line immigration bill.

………


The Washington Post
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In blow to GOP, House fails to pass massive farm bill in face of conservative Republican showdown
by Erica Werner and Mike DeBonis May 18 Email the author

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday expresses support for the House Agriculture Committee’s work on the farm bill. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

A sweeping farm bill failed in the House on Friday in a blow to GOP leaders who were unable to placate conservative lawmakers demanding commitments on immigration.

The House leadership put the bill on the floor gambling it would pass despite unanimous Democratic opposition. They negotiated with members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus up to the last minutes.

But their gamble failed. The vote was 213 to 198, with 30 Republicans joining 183 Democrats in defeating the bill.

The outcome exposed what is becoming an all-out war within the House GOP over immigration, a divisive fight the Republicans did not want to have heading into midterm elections in November that will decide control of Congress.

The bill’s collapse also highlight the splits within the GOP conference that have bedeviled House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and will be certain to dog the top lieutenants in line to replace him, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.).

With moderate Republicans maneuvering to force a vote on legislation offering citizenship to some younger immigrants who arrived in the country as children, conservatives revolted. The farm bill became a bargaining chip as they lobbied leadership for a vote on a hard-line immigration bill.

Leaders tried to come up with a compromise, but 11th-hour negotiations, offers and counteroffers failed. McCarthy and Scalise will face a share of the blame for the failure, and their fortunes in the race to replace Ryan next year could suffer accordingly.

The farm bill itself became practically a sideshow, despite its importance to agriculture and the significant changes it would institute to food stamp programs.

………

The farm bill itself broke open partisan House divisions as Democrats abandoned negotiations with Republicans over the food stamp changes, which would require adults to spend 20 hours per week working or participating in a state-run training program as a condition to receive benefits. Democrats argue that a million or more people would end up losing benefits, because most states do not have the capacity to set up the training programs required.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) described the legislation as “cruel” and argued that with the proposed changes to food stamps, “Republicans are taking food out of the mouths of families struggling to make ends meet.”

This outcome was eminently predictable, and it could not happen to a more deserving guy.

It looks like Gina Haspel is looking to drop out from her nomination as head of the CIA, because she finds it embarrassing that she is a torturer:

Gina Haspel, President Trump’s nominee to become the next CIA director, sought to withdraw her nomination Friday after some White House officials worried that her role in the interrogation of terrorist suspects could prevent her confirmation by the Senate, according to four senior U.S. officials.

Haspel told the White House she was interested in stepping aside if it avoided the spectacle of a brutal confirmation hearing on Wednesday and potential damage to the CIA’s reputation and her own, the officials said. She was summoned to the White House on Friday for a meeting on her history in the CIA’s controversial interrogation program — which employed techniques such as waterboarding that are widely seen as torture — and signaled that she was going to withdraw her nomination. She then returned to CIA headquarters, the officials said.

Taken aback at her stance, senior White House aides, including legislative affairs head Marc Short and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, rushed to Langley, Va., to meet with Haspel at her office late Friday afternoon. Discussions stretched several hours, officials said, and the White House was not entirely sure she would stick with her nomination until Saturday afternoon, according to the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

My guess is that someone on the Senate Intelligence Committee is requesting some highly more documents from the CIA about her record, and she is freaking out.

I'm not sure if I want to see her withdraw, or I want to see her crucified at a confirmation hearing, but both are a positive outcome.

Like Lord of the Flies, on Acid

In appears that in response to the widening miasma of corruption surrounding EPA chief Scott Pruitt, he has directed his staff to start leaking damaging information on Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke:

As Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt faces a seemingly endless stream of scandal, his team is scrambling to divert the spotlight to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. And the White House isn’t happy about it.

In the last week, a member of Pruitt’s press team, Michael Abboud, has been shopping negative stories about Zinke to multiple outlets, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the efforts, as well as correspondence reviewed by The Atlantic.

“This did not happen, and it’s categorically false,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said.

The stories were shopped with the intention of “taking the heat off of Pruitt,” the sources said, in the aftermath of the EPA chief’s punishing congressional hearing last week. They both added, however, that most reporters felt the story was not solid enough to run. On Thursday, Patrick Howley of Big League Politics published a piece on the allegations; he did not respond to request for comment as to his sources.

Abboud alleged to reporters that an Interior staffer conspired with former EPA deputy chief of staff Kevin Chmielewski to leak damaging information about the EPA, as part of a rivalry between Zinke and Pruitt. The collaboration, Abboud claimed, allowed the Interior staffer to prop up Zinke at the expense of Pruitt, and Chmielewski to “get back” at his former boss.

Not a surprise.  Both Pruitt and Zinke have little interest in the underlying purpose of their jobs, or their agencies, and as such, it's all about that old career ladder.

Hypocrisy, Arrogance, and Bigotry Are Not a Good Combination

Last year, I noted that MSNBC media personality Joy Reid had been caught throwing around bigoted homophobic comments on her now defunct blog, particularly as pertains to Florida politician Charlie Crist.

She made a perfunctory apology, and it faded into the background, until this week.

New homophobic posts were uncovered on the internet archive the Wayback Machine, and now Joy Reid is claiming that these were the result of hackers.

The wayback isn't the only archive service.
There's more out there...just waiting to be found.

The internet is forever.https://t.co/f5tHT8HRDm

— Queef Whisperer🕵️ (@queefagain) April 25, 2018

She has variously claimed that hackers accessed her blog after the fact and changed the posts, or that the Wayback Machine has been hacked, an allegation which the good folks there politely called bullsh%$, as did an analysis by The Daily Beast.

Unfortunately, as this colorfully named Twitter user observes, her blog posts have been archived by a number of archiving services over a rather long period:

According to the Library of Congress, Reid’s blog was archived on their local server on January 12, 2006–two days after the blog post in question was authored. Reid has so far decided against contacting the Library of Congress regarding the hacking allegations.

Oh Snap.

Also, see this Twitter thread, it gives a good survey of what was posted.

Also, the LBGT group PFLAG just rescinded an award that they intended to present to Reid, and she has had to cancel an appearance at an event with former New York US Attorney Preet Bharara.

My guess is that Reid is being honest when she says that she does not recall making those posts, but I put that down to her memory, and not hackers going after her 10 years ago.

Oh the Huge Hannity!

It appears that in all the diatribes that Sean Hannity has launched against Robert Mueller for his raid against Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen, he forgot to mention that Cohen was his lawyer as well:

On his prime-time show last week, Fox News host Sean Hannity repeatedly criticized a federal raid on the office and home of Michael Cohen, the embattled personal attorney for President Trump.

He never mentioned anything to his viewers about his own dealings with Cohen.

Hannity’s name unexpectedly came up in court Monday as a judge hearing a motion brought by Cohen’s legal team to exclude some items seized in the raid pressed them to identify Cohen’s clients.

Cohen, who has identified himself as Trump’s “fixer,” had acknowledged representing the president and former Republican National Committee deputy finance chairman Elliott Broidy, but had initially sought to keep a third name private.

Eventually, though, Cohen attorney Todd Harrison submitted Hannity’s name — a claim Hannity almost immediately denied.

Well he would say that, wouldn't he? (MRDA)

On his syndicated radio and Fox TV show, Hannity has torn into special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential campaign, calling it a “witch hunt” in an echo of Trump’s rhetoric. He has also played down Cohen’s role in facilitating payments to Daniels.

………

He didn’t mention any business connection or professional relationship with Cohen.

………

Cohen’s attorney argued that it would be “embarrassing” for Cohen’s other clients to be named publicly and had sought to keep their names out of the public record, given the intense media coverage of Cohen’s legal troubles.

Yeah, I guess it is kind of embarrassing, you poor delicate snowflake.

I REALLY don't expect Fox news to do anything meaningful, but then again I NEVER expect Fox News to do anything meaningful.

Still it is amusing to see Hannity twisting in the wind.

Tweet of the Day

I don't get the sense that Cohen and Hannity have thought this all the way through -- the impact of their positions on the attorney-client privilege, and how they may be waiving and/or undermining privilege.

They need to be playing chess. They're playing Hungry Hungry Hippos.

— TheNewNormalHat (@Popehat) April 16, 2018

It's important to remember how this is different from Watergate. One of the big ways is that regardless of a generally similar level of immorality, Richard Nixon and his evil minions^™ were not stupid people who unmoored from reality, and Donald Trump and his evil minions^™ are stupid people who are unmoored reality.

Popehat owes me a screen wipe for the "Hungry Hungry Hippos" comment.

Going Long on Fig Newton Futures

It appears that Trump has issued an order ending the crackdown on marijuana in states where it is legal.

Of note is that he made this decision without consulting Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, his Attorney General.

I think that Trump knows that so long as Sessions is given a free hand at restoring Jim Crow throughout the nation, something that Trump agrees with, there is no limit to the amount of crap that Sessions will swallow:

The Trump administration is abandoning a Justice Department threat to crack down on recreational marijuana in states where it is legal, a move that could enable cannabis businesses in California and other states that have legalized pot to operate without fear of federal raids and prosecution.

President Trump personally directed the abrupt retreat, which came at the behest of Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado. White House officials confirmed the policy shift Friday. Trump did not inform Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions in advance of the change in policy, an almost unheard of undermining of a Cabinet official.

Gardner was incensed in January when the Justice Department announced that it was rescinding an Obama-era policy that directed federal prosecutors not to target marijuana businesses that operate legally under state law. The senator had blocked Justice Department nominees in retaliation.

In conversation with Trump this week, Gardner said he was assured that the federal government would not interfere with his state's marijuana industry and that Trump would champion a new law that gives states the authority to set their own pot policies. In response, he lifted his remaining holds on nominees.

(emphasis mine)

I am beginning to think that Trump is trying to see how much he can humiliate Sessions before he ups and leaves.

I am not sure if I am more heartened by the shift in policy, or by the degree to which Sessions has been publicly humiliated.

Yeah, This Amuses the Hell out of Me Too

It appears that Donald Trump is having a devil of a time finding counsel willing to represent him,

My guess is because as is clear to even my legal mind, Donald Trump is the client from hell:

Two more high-power attorneys have had to turn down President Donald Trump. Tom Buchanan and Dan Webb confirmed to The Daily Beast that Trump reached out to them about representing him, and that they couldn’t do it.

“President Trump reached out to Dan Webb and Tom Buchanan to provide legal representation,” they said in a statement. “They were unable to take on the representation due to business conflicts. However they consider the opportunity to represent the President to be the highest honor and they sincerely regret that they cannot do so. They wish the president the best and believe he has excellent representation in Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow.”

………

Buchanan and Webb’s decision highlights the challenges the president has faced in assembling a legal team to represent him for matters related to the Mueller probe. Over the weekend, Trump tweeted that numerous lawyers were eager to work for him. But so far, his team has been shrinking rather than expanding.

There are good clients, and bad clients, and awful clients, and then there is Donald Trump, and lawyers simply do not want to deal with his crap.

Heh.

Sauce for the Gander, I Guess

At Least, There is Symmetry

It turns out that we may have another dress figuring in a Presidential sex scandal:

I honestly thought Stormy Daniels' friend Alana Evans was just trolling CNN with this, but maybe there's something to it.

During a much longer interview with CNN's Jim Sciutto, Stormy's friend Alana Evans told him she was unaware of any texts, pictures or video but there was one thing. One little thing.

"All I know is that Stormy still has the dress that she wore rom that night," Evans told Sciutto.

Nonplussed, he asked, "And she kept that for what reason?"

As if everyone's mind didn't go to Monica Lewinsky's little blue dress. Please.

Of course, the Republicans are not going to do anything if this whole mess pans out, even if Trump were to, "Put half a dozen children on a spit and toast them at the flame that comes out of his mouth," as playwright Christopher Fry so colo(u)rfully put it many years ago, the Republican base would continue to support him.

Still, watching him squirm on a matter which won't have the effect of f%$#ing up the world for the next few decades amuses me.

This Amuses Me

We always knew that former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was corrupt and venal, but I never expected that he would actually be taken into custody.

Even more amusing is that appears that the money that he from Moammar Gaddafi, before he engineered his ouster and murder, is what will get him taken down.

Considering the blow-back from the Libya debacle, and he and Cameron were the prime movers for this, it does mean that he's done in French politics:

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was taken into police custody Tuesday over allegations he illegally accepted 50 million euros ($68.5 million) from the government of the late Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to finance his successful 2007 presidential campaign.

The detention of Sarkozy — France’s president between 2007 and 2012 — represented a major development in what is likely to become an explosive political scandal.

Sarkozy has repeatedly denied allegations that he took money from Gaddafi, slamming the accusations as “grotestque” and “crude ma­nipu­la­tion .”

Although an investigation began in 2013, Tuesday marked the first time authorities have questioned Sarkozy on the matter. Under French law, authorities can hold a suspect in custody for up to 48 hours before deciding whether there are sufficient grounds to launch a formal investigation.

Brice Hortefeux, who served as France’s interior minister under Sarkozy, was also questioned by police Tuesday, although not taken into custody.

It could not happen to a more deserving rat f%$#.

I really hope that he does some jail time, unlike, for example, his predecessor Jacques Chirac, who merely received probation.

One down, Nine Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety Nine to Go

Martin Shkreli has been sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud.

The obvious follow-up question is, "What about the other guys?"

People like Lloyd Blankfein, Tim Sloan, Jamie Dimon, Brian Moynihan, etc.

A federal judge on Friday sentenced Martin Shkreli, the notorious former hedge fund manager, to seven years in prison for defrauding his investors of $10 million.

In imposing the sentence, U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto roughly split the difference between the 15 years prosecutors asked for and the up to 18 months sought by Shkreli’s defense team. Shkreli, 34, who delivered a tearful speech to Matsumoto apologizing for his conduct and pleading for leniency, did not react to the sentence.

A complicated picture of Shkreli emerged from the trial, said Matsumoto, who said the case had given her a case of insomnia. “It is more than clear that Mr. Shkreli is a gifted individual with a passion for science,” she said. But his crimes are serious and it is important to send a message that such fraud should be not tolerated, she said. “White collar offenders like Mr. Shkreli use their intelligence and acumen to elude detection,” she said.

Shkreli, best known for raising the price of an AIDS drug by 5,000 percent when he was chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, was convicted last August of defrauding the investors in his hedge funds, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare. Shkreli lied to obtain investors’ money and then didn’t tell them when he made a bad stock bet that led to massive losses, prosecutors argued. Instead, they said, he raised more money to pay off other investors, or took money and stock from Retrophin, a drug company he founded.

We need to throw a whole bunch more people in jail, but it ain't gonna happen.

Should I Start a GoFundMe?*

Poster child for backpfeifengesicht, a face that needs to be punched

Pharma bro Martin Shkreli will have to forfeit $7.6 million, including his copy of the Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon A Time in Shaolin as a result.

My heart bleeds borscht:

The disgraced pharmaceutical executive and hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli must forfeit $7.36 million in assets (PDF) to the federal government following his fraud conviction, a judge ruled Monday. The assets set for forfeiture (PDF) include the single copy of the Wu-Tang album Once Upon A Time in Shaolin that Shkreli reportedly bought for $2 million, as well as a painting by Pablo Picasso.

The forfeiture follows Shkreli’s conviction last October on three of eight counts of securities and wire fraud. The federal government had indicted Shkreli in December of 2015 for running a Ponzi-like scheme, alleging he defrauded investors in two hedge funds he managed and siphoned millions from his pharmaceutical company, Retrophin, to cover losses.

Oh, the horror.

^*For the snark impaired, if I do actually start a GoFundMe, it will be done ironically.

Poland, Meet Barbara Streisand

Poland's new law which forbids discussion of Polish complicity in the Holocaust has made discussion of Polish complicity in the Holocaust much more more likely.

Poland, meet the Streisand Effect:

The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet. It is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, their motivation to access and spread it is increased.

It appears that the Polish parliament IS a Polish joke:

But an effort to refocus attention on to Polish suffering, and away from the Holocaust, through a change to Poland’s anti-defamation law — which now makes it a crime for anyone, in any part of the world, to accuse “the Polish Nation” of complicity in Nazi war crimes — has backfired spectacularly.

The new law, which took effect this week, prompted widespread criticism from Israeli officials and Jewish groups in the United States — as well as Polish historians, Germany’s foreign minister and the State Department. In an effort to defuse tensions, Poland’s far-right, nationalist government has promised that the law will not be enforced in the coming weeks, until it can be reviewed by the nation’s constitutional court.

But even if the law is never enforced, the debate over the text of the amendment has already profoundly damaged Poland’s past and present reputation.

The clearest impact of the legislation has been to draw fresh attention to recent historical research which makes it plain that Poles rarely opposed and were frequently complicit in the persecution of their Jewish neighbors by the Nazis following the annexation of western Poland to Germany.

D'oh!

Kushner Clearance Downgraded

He has had an interim Top Secret clearance for months, and now it has been reduced to a secret clearance, because, between his lies misstatements on his clearance forms and his extensive debts to a veritable rogues gallery he is a walking security risk.

We've already had reports of multiple foreign governments using his precarious financial situation and closeness to Donald Trump to attempt to derive leverage with the White House, so this was a logical decision to make.

This Has Gotta Hurt

Republican Kevin Nicholson is running in the primary for a chance to run against Tammy Baldwin's for US Senate.

His parents have donated the maximum to the Baldwin campaign:

This is amusing. Apparently, Kevin Nicholson's parents are staunch Democrats, so much so they'd rather give their money to Tammy Baldwin than a Republican, even if he's their own son.

Sharper than a serpent's tooth, neh?

Pass the Popcorn

It's taken a while, but Israeli police have finally recommended that Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted for corruption:

The Israeli police announced on Tuesday that there was sufficient evidence indicating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took bribes in two separate cases and acted "against public interests."

The two cases are the so-called Case 1000 – in which Netanyahu is suspected of accepting lavish gifts from wealthy benefactors in return for advancing their interests – and Case 2000, which alleges that Netanyahu tried to strike a deal that would have provided him with positive coverage in Israel's second largest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, in exchange for hurting its free rival, Israel Hayom.

According to the police, in Case 1000, Netanyahu received champagne, cigars, jewelry and clothing, by demand and systematically, valued at over one million shekels (around $280,000). The gifts he received from the Israeli-American Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan increased significantly once Netanyahu was elected prime minister.

Seriously, after spending almost $3000.00 on "Ice Cream" in 2013, criminal profligacy should surprise no one.

As a supporter of Israel, I consider Netanyahu to be a bigger threat to the safety and security of the Jewish state than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, so I pleased at this news.

The Further Adventures of Everyone's Favorite Slum Lord

I am referring, of course, to Jared Kushner, who is being sued for an exceptional level of slum lord sliminess.

They have been trying to move the suit to Federal court, where the jury would be less sympathetic.

Unfortunately for him, being in Federal court would require his company to reveal all the investors, and a judge has ruled that this information would not be kept under seal, so going to stay in Maryland state court:

Jared Kushner’s family real estate company has backtracked on its effort to have a lawsuit filed against it by tenants of its Baltimore-area apartment complexes moved to federal court, after a judge ruled that this transfer would require it to reveal the identities of its investment partners.

The tenants’ class-action lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City in September, four months after a ProPublica article co-published with the New York Times Magazine described the highly aggressive tactics used by Kushner Companies to pursue tenants and former tenants over allegedly unpaid rent or broken leases. The lawsuit alleged that Kushner Companies, which owns 15 large apartment complexes in the Baltimore area, was improperly piling late fees and court fees onto tenants’ bills, often in excess of state limits, and using the threat of immediate eviction to force payment.

In early November, the various Kushner affiliates named in the lawsuit filed a request to have the case moved from the state court, where it would be heard by a Baltimore City jury, to the federal courts, where it would be heard by a jury drawn from a broader geographic swath of Maryland. To get approval for this request, Kushner Companies had to show that none of the investors it has brought in as partners on the complexes are based in Maryland.

The Kushner affiliates also filed a motion in federal court seeking to have the list of the investment partners shielded from public view, citing the high degree of media interest in Jared Kushner, who as Kushner Companies CEO presided over the purchase of the complexes before moving into the White House to serve as senior advisor to President Donald Trump, his father-in-law. “Given the tenor of the media’s reporting of this case, including politically-motivated innuendo no doubt intended to disparage the First Family, there is foreseeable risk of prejudice to the privacy rights and reputations of innocent private investors,” the Kushner lawyers wrote.

So, who do you think that his investors are?

For real estate in general, and the Kushners in particular, helping people launder money with real estate is a core operating principle.

My guess is that it would be mobsters, drug lords, with Saudis, Chinese, and Russian oligarchs thrown in as a garnish.

How Special

Trump's head of the CDC, Brenda Fitzgerald, has resigned.

It has to do with the fact that she couldn't do her job, because she had active investments in opioid tracking systems and in cancer detection systems and actively invested in tobacco companies.

Doing this while running a organization dedicated to eliminating the scourge of tobacco is a rather perverse way to hedge one's bets:

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention resigned on Wednesday, in the middle of the nation’s worst flu epidemic in nearly a decade, because of her troubling financial investments in tobacco and health care companies that posed potential conflicts of interest.

Alex Azar, the newly appointed secretary of Health and Human Services, announced the resignation of the director, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald. An agency statement cited her “complex financial interests that have imposed a broad recusal limiting her ability to complete all her duties as the C.D.C. director.”

The statement continued: “Due to the nature of these financial interests, Dr. Fitzgerald could not divest from them in a definitive time period. After advising Secretary Azar of both the status of the financial interests and the scope of her recusal, Dr. Fitzgerald tendered, and the secretary accepted, her resignation. ”

………

The resignation was announced less than a day after Politico reported on Tuesday that Dr. Fitzgerald, 71, had traded in tobacco stocks even after taking the position at the public health agency. Her financial investments and potential conflicts of interest were a source of concern in recent months for some members of Congress, especially when she had to recuse herself from appearing before them on certain agency matters.

A former Georgia health commissioner, Dr. Fitzgerald was appointed to the federal agency last July by Tom Price, a fellow Georgian who served as Mr. Trump’s first H.H.S. secretary — until he too was forced to resign under fire, for traveling extensively on private jets and expensing more than $400,000 for those trips to the government. Both Dr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Price had controversial investments in health care and drug companies; Dr. Fitzgerald also had financial interests (along with her husband) in several major tobacco companies.

In a September ethics agreement, she said she would divest from many stocks, including the tobacco holdings, that might pose a conflict of interest. The companies included CVS Health, Quest Diagnostics, AbbVie, Merck, and Zimmer Biomet Holdings. But she also said that she and her husband, Dr. Thomas Fitzgerald, were unable to divest from some holdings because of legal or contractual restrictions. Those were GW Ventures and Greenway Messenger, which are limited liability companies formed to invest in Greenway Health LLC, an electronic health information company, and Isommune, a biotech company focusing on early cancer detection.

Did I forget to mention that, while Georgia health commissioner, she got funding from Coca Cola to run an anti-obesity program that downplayed the role of sugar?

To quote Elvis Costello, "Oh, I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused ."

The Chinese are Copping a Major Attitude

The Chinese built a headquarters building for the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethopia.

It seemed like a generous thing, until they discovered that everything in the building was engineered to spy on its occupants and then phone home.

Seriously China, who do you think you are, the United States?

In 2012, the Chinese government “graciously offered” African States a gift and constructed the African Union’s headquarters in Addis Ababa. The act of soft diplomacy proved to be a rather self-serving maneuver to spy on the activities and discussions being conducted by leaders of the exclusive continental group.

In Addis Ababa, ministers and heads of states meet twice a year to discuss major continental issues. While strict security measures give the impression that that building is closely monitored and secured, an unseen security threat was present from 2012 until 2017. The threat was from none other than those who built the headquarters: the Chinese. An investigation conducted by “Le Monde Afrique” exposed Chinese espionage efforts.

According to the report, for five years, between midnight and 2 a.m., computer servers were reaching a peak in data transfer activity. A computer scientist noticed the oddity of the situation. The organization’s technical staff later discovered that the AU servers were all connected to servers located in Shanghai.

Every night, the secrets of the AU were being stored more than 8,000 km away by what was thought to be a diplomatic ally of Africa.

I am reminded of the adage about social media, "If the product is free, you are the product .

Stooges, Definitely, Russian? I Don't Know.

At least, there is symmetry.
                  \

It now appears that everyone's favorite group of jack-booted thugs, the National Rifle Association, is being investigated by the FBI for acting as a pass through Russian money to support the Trump campaign.

It's not clear from the story as to whether this is Russian government money, or just money from rich Russians, and separating the two is generally problematic, but here we have a real crime, money laundering, which is a felony:

The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, two sources familiar with the matter have told McClatchy.

FBI counterintelligence investigators have focused on the activities of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who is known for his close relationships with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the NRA, the sources said.

It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.

It’s unclear how long the Torshin inquiry has been ongoing, but the news comes as Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sweeping investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including whether the Kremlin colluded with Trump’s campaign, has been heating up.

All of the sources spoke on condition of anonymity because Mueller’s investigation is confidential and mostly involves classified information.
………

The extent to which the FBI has evidence of money flowing from Torshin to the NRA, or of the NRA’s participation in the transfer of funds, could not be learned.

However, the NRA reported spending a record $55 million on the 2016 elections, including $30 million to support Trump – triple what the group devoted to backing Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. Most of that was money was spent by an arm of the NRA that is not required to disclose its donors.

Even a lower level prosecution might put the NRA's tax exemption at risk, but getting Wayne LaPierre convicted of a felony, which would require him to give up all of his guns, would make my f%$#ing day, big time.