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The Dead Pool – 10 February 2017

by MargaretaDycus7 Posted on February 11, 2017

Mother Jones

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As if National Security Advisor Michael Flynn doesn’t already have enough bad news on his plate, today he got some more:

On Friday, one of Flynn’s closest deputies on the National Security Council, senior director for Africa Robin Townley, was informed that the Central Intelligence Agency had rejected his request for an elite security clearance required for service on the NSC, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.

That forced Townley, a former Marine intelligence officer who had long maintained a top secret-level security clearance, out of his NSC post, explained the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. One of the sources said that the rejection was approved by Trump’s CIA director Mike Pompeo and that it infuriated Flynn and his allies.

Flynn has been sharply critical of the CIA, and apparently he’s regarded by some in the White House as waging “a jihad against the intelligence community.” So was this a little chin music by the CIA to warn Flynn to back off? Or was there really some kind of problem with Townley? Maybe someday we’ll find out.

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The Dead Pool – 10 February 2017

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Never Has It Been Easier to Get Secret Cash to a President

by JanaGoffage2300 Posted on February 9, 2017

Mother Jones

On a recent Tuesday evening, a donor, lobbyist, or foreign diplomat hoping to make inroads with President Donald Trump and his retinue of family members and allies needed only to show up to the lobby bar of the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Seated together on couches near the bar were Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son and now the co-head of the Trump Organization; Brad Parscale, the digital guru for Trump’s presidential campaign who is now running an outside group created to bolster Trump and his agenda; and Nick Ayers, a political consultant and former aide to Vice President Mike Pence who is also working for Trump’s new outside group. With security guards stationed nearby, the men held court, posed for photos with guests, and then headed to the White House to attend the announcement ceremony for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.

No president in American history has entered office as conflict-ridden as Trump. It’s almost impossible to keep track of all the ways someone seeking to influence him and his administration could do so without a trace. A donation made through a shell corporation to Trump’s inaugural committee. An undisclosed donation to America First Policies, the new outside group run by Ayers, Parscale, and other ex-Trump aides. A monthly retainer to Avenue Strategies, the consulting firm launched by former Trump aides Corey Lewandowski and Barry Bennett and conveniently located one block from the White House.

But there is a simpler and more direct way to put money in the pocket of the new president and his family: spend money at a Trump hotel or resort. Lots of money. In many ways, the president’s properties—which he refuses to divest or separate himself from in any serious way—serve as ideal conduits for directly influencing and even bribing the Trump administration.

Steven Schooner, a professor of government procurement law at George Washington University and an expert on federal contracting, says an individual, corporation, or foreign government could pay for rooms at Trump hotels, spend lavishly at hotel restaurants, and drop sizeable sums on ballrooms and other event spaces to direct money to the Trump family in the hopes of acquiring influence. “It’s a win-win,” Schooner says. “If you use the space, you’re entertaining people on the president’s property, and if you don’t, you’ve basically just funneled the money to the president and the president’s family.”

At this point, Schooner added, there is no way for anyone outside the Trump Organization and the Trump family to know if any corporations, lobbyists, advocacy groups, businesspeople, foreign governments, or overseas leaders spend money at Trump properties. (Ditto arms traders, sleazy financiers, or any other bad actors.) Noting the recent decision by Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort to double its initiation fee, Schooner said, “They’re willing to raise the price on anything. What would be an outrageous payment for a social event at a Trump property? $100,000? $200,000? $300,000? And the public will never find out about it.” In other words, anyone who wanted the Trumps’ attention and goodwill could rent out space at a Trump hotel or resort for an exorbitant amount—whether they actually used it for a function or not.

Foreign dignitaries have already flocked to Trump’s Washington hotel. A week after the election, nearly 100 foreign diplomats partied at one of the hotel’s ballroom spaces, dubbed the Lincoln Library. Kuwait moved its annual National Day party from the Four Seasons to Trump’s DC hotel. As one Asian diplomat told the Washington Post in November, “Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’? Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?'”

A DC-based lobbyist, who asked for anonymity to speak openly about Trump and his properties, told me that he hadn’t personally felt pressure to patronize Trump’s hotel, but “reading between the lines isn’t that tough here.” He went on, “There is a reason that the senior staff hang out in the lobby bar at the hotel. They are seeing who spends time and money there and who books large parties there and large blocks of rooms for delegations.” The lobbyist said he wouldn’t be surprised to see major trade associations such as the US Chamber of Commerce or the National Association of Broadcasters use the hotel to put up visiting colleagues and affiliates. “Point is,” the lobbyist said, “someone is paying attention to the person who orders the $1,000 bottle of wine.”

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) recently sent a letter to Trump requesting information from Mar-a-Lago, the Trump-owned private club in South Florida that will serve as the president’s winter White House. Whitehouse and Udall asked Trump to make public Mar-a-Lago’s private membership list and the names of members and visitors to the club when Trump is there, and to explain how Trump plans to screen members and guests for ties to foreign governments that may seek to influence the president. “Now that you are president, you have an obligation to dispel any suspicions that access to you can be purchased by a private club membership fee,” the senators wrote. (The White House and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment for this story.)

Unlike presidents before him, Trump has refused to divest from his international business holdings, over the objections of myriad ethics experts. Indeed, the Trump Organization is capitalizing on the soaring profile of its founder. Mar-a-Lago upped its initiation fee from $100,000 to $200,000. A Trump Organization executive also suggested that the company plans to expand its hotel offerings, eyeing 26 US metropolitan areas for new projects. (The company currently has properties in five major markets.) At Trump’s January 11 press conference, a lawyer for Trump said the new president would step down from management roles at the Trump Organization and put his assets into a trust controlled by his sons but would not give up his ownership stake. Trump’s lawyer also said Trump would donate the profits—not revenue—from his hotels derived from foreign government sources to the US Treasury, but at present there is no method for confirming that Trump is in fact complying with the agreement.

Outside ethics experts say Trump’s conflicts-of-interest plan does almost nothing to clear up problems that could arise during his presidency. Walter Shaub, the director of the Office of Government Ethics, called the plan “meaningless.” Norm Eisen, who served as an ethics attorney under President Obama, told Mother Jones that Trump’s plan “falls short in every respect.”

Trump still stands to benefit financially from the properties he owns. He recently transferred ownership stake in his Washington hotel into a trust that exists solely “to hold assets for the exclusive benefit of Donald J. Trump,” according to a regulatory filing obtained by ProPublica. So money spent at the Trump International Hotel in Washington still winds up in his own coffers. It doesn’t have to create a profit for Trump to benefit: Hotel revenue can cover overhead and debt payments, such as Trump’s $170 million loan from Deutsche Bank for his DC hotel.

Trump said at his January 11 press conference that he would not discuss business with his sons, but ethics experts say there is no way to police this. Donald Jr. and Eric appear to enjoy ample access to their father, to the White House, and to policymakers in and around the administration. On inauguration weekend, the brothers hobnobbed with their father’s foreign business partners at inaugural parties. The brothers’ social-media accounts show them sitting front row for Gorsuch’s announcement ceremony in the West Wing and later chatting one-on-one with Gorsuch while Pence stood awkwardly behind Donald Jr.

So how much could someone trying to gain goodwill with Trump potentially spend at one of his hotels? Going by the hotel’s advertised rate of $481 a night, a 20-room reservation for 10 days—whether used or not—adds up to $96,400. The hotel’s suites range in price from $1,025 a night (the Ivanka suite) to $25,000 a night (the Trump Townhouse).

The Trump administration has gone out of its way to promote Trump’s Washington hotel. Sean Spicer, then the incoming White House press secretary, plugged the hotel during a press briefing on the day before Trump’s swearing-in. “It’s an absolutely stunning hotel,” Spicer told reporters. “I encourage you to go there if you haven’t been by.” During the official inaugural parade, Trump stopped his motorcade near the hotel, exited his vehicle, and began walking along Pennsylvania Avenue, where he and his family waved to fans. Since Trump took office, his Washington hotel has become a hub and gathering spot for Trump supporters, acolytes, and—yes—family members.

Larry Noble, the general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a good-government group that has highlighted Trump’s many conflicts of interest, says Trump could have easily resolved any conflicts stemming from the Washington hotel and all the other properties he owns or financially benefits from by fully divesting his assets. “The hotel is a shining example of his conflicts of interest and his arrogance about his conflicts of interest,” Noble says. “There’s only one answer: He should’ve divested himself and sold the hotel.”

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Never Has It Been Easier to Get Secret Cash to a President

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The Mysterious Disappearance of the Biggest Scandal in Washington

by 2343b4u4u Posted on February 9, 2017

Mother Jones

The biggest election-related scandal since Watergate occurred last year, and it has largely disappeared from the political-media landscape of Washington.

According to the consensus assessment of US intelligence agencies, Russian intelligence, under the orders of Vladimir Putin, mounted an extensive operation to influence the 2016 campaign to benefit Donald Trump. This was a widespread covert campaign that included hacking Democratic targets and publishing swiped emails via WikiLeaks. And it achieved its objectives. But the nation’s capital remains under-outraged by this subversion. The congressional intelligence committees announced last month that they will investigate the Russian hacking and also examine whether there were any improper contacts between the Trump camp and Russia during the campaign. (A series of memos attributed to a former British counterintelligence officer included allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.) Yet these behind-closed-doors inquiries have generated minimum media notice, and, overall, there has not been much outcry.

Certainly, every once in a while, a Democratic legislator or one of the few Republican officials who have bothered to express any disgust at the Moscow meddling (namely Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio) will pipe up. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi days ago called on the FBI to investigate Trump’s “financial, personal and political connections to Russia” to determine “the relationship between Putin, whom he admires, and Donald Trump.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), responding to Trump’s comparison of the United States to Putin’s repressive regime, said on CNN, “What is this strange relationship between Putin and Trump? And is there something that the Russians have on him that is causing him to say these really bizarre things on an almost daily basis?” A few weeks ago, Graham told me he wanted an investigation of how the FBI has handled intelligence it supposedly has gathered on ties between Trump insiders and Russia. And last month, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) pushed FBI Director James Comey at a public hearing to release this information. Yet there has been no drumbeat of sound bites, tweets, or headlines. In recent days, the story has gone mostly dark.

Look at the White House daily press briefings. Since Trump entered office, there has been far more back-and-forth between reporters and Press Secretary Sean Spicer on the inauguration crowd size, Trump’s bathrobe, and Melissa McCarthy than the Russia scandal. Trump associates are perhaps being questioned by House and Senate intelligence committee investigators, and the FBI, which according to news reports has looked at possible ties between Trump advisers and Russia, might also still be on the case. Yet this has not been a top priority for White House reporters.

Here are two questions that could have been posed to Spicer at his first briefing:

* Have any past or present Trump associates, inside or outside his administration, been contacted or questioned by the intelligence committees, the FBI, or any other government body investigating the Russian hacking or interactions between Trump’s circle and Russia?

* During the presidential campaign, did Trump or any of his political or business associates have any interactions with Russian officials or Russian intermediaries?

That did not happen. At Spicer’s first briefing, Anita Kumar of McClatchy did ask, “Has the president spoken to any of the intelligence agencies about the investigation into the Russian connections? And will he allow that to go on?” Spicer replied, “I don’t believe he has spoken to anyone specifically about that and I don’t know that. He has not made any indication that he would stop an investigation of any sort.” This was an important question that warranted a response that was less equivocal—and reporters could have pointed that out.

At the next day’s briefing, on January 24, Margaret Talev of Bloomberg asked Spicer about reports that Comey was remaining in his post and whether Comey and Trump had discussed “the Russia investigation and the parameters of that.” Spicer responded, “I don’t have anything on that.” Spicer’s nonresponse didn’t prompt any news.

In the fortnight since, the key twin questions—what is Trump doing regarding the Russian hacking, and are Trump associates being investigated for interactions with Russia?—have not been regular items on the agenda during the White House briefings. When Trump spoke to Putin by phone on January 28, subsequent media reports noted that the call focused on how relations could be improved. There was no public indication that Trump had said anything to Putin about the Russian intervention in the US election. And in the following days, White House reporters did not ask Spicer about this apparent omission.

There have been plenty of significant topics for journalists to press Spicer and the administration on—the travel ban on refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Trump’s plan to dump Obamacare, various nominations and a Supreme Court pick, Trump’s fact-free charge of widespread voter fraud, Steve Bannon’s participation on the National Security Council, Trump’s contentious calls with foreign leaders, the president’s erratic behavior, and much more. But the lack of media attention to the Russia story, at the White House briefings and beyond, is curious. It is true that the intelligence committee probes are being conducted secretly, and there are no public hearings or actions to cover. (Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, hoping to confine this scandal, succeeded in preventing the creation of a special committee or an independent commission to probe this affair—either of which would have probably sparked more coverage than the highly secretive intelligence committees.) Still, in the past, pundits, politicians, and reporters in Washington have not been reluctant to go all-out in covering and commenting upon a controversy subjected to private investigation.

In this instance, the president’s own people may be under investigation, and Trump has demonstrated no interest in holding Putin accountable for messing with US elections in what may be considered an act of covert warfare. Still, there has been no loud demand from the DC media (or most of the GOP) for answers and explanations. This quietude is good news for Putin—and reason for him to think he could get away with such an operation again.

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The Mysterious Disappearance of the Biggest Scandal in Washington

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We Are Seeing a Return of the Mayberry Machiavellis

by whitfieldElder Posted on February 8, 2017

Mother Jones

Consider the following three things that have happened in the past month:

After years of promising to repeal Obamacare, Republicans finally have the power to do it. But they’ve suddenly discovered that it’s going to be a lot harder than they thought.
President Trump kept his campaign promise to institute “extreme vetting” of refugees and visitors to the US, but the rollout was bungled so horribly that he’s losing support for it even among Republicans.
Last week Trump approved his first military operation. It was a disaster. The evidence here is a bit murky, but it suggests that the raid was vetted less stringently than usual because of Trump’s desire to cut through red tape and give the military more freedom to fight terrorism.

These are examples of what Barack Obama was talking about when he told Trump that “reality has a way of asserting itself.” More generally, it’s the result of a Republican Party that has been averse to policy for a very long time. They have principles and beliefs, but they don’t spend much time thinking hard about how to implement those principles in the most efficient possible way.

They believe that Obamacare is a failure. They believe that immigration should be shut down. They believe the military should be unleashed. But these are just bumper stickers. They haven’t spent much time developing serious policy responses on these topics because (a) that would give Democrats something concrete to attack, (b) their base likes bumper stickers, and (c) policy analysis has a habit of highlighting problems with ideological purity and pushing solutions toward the center.1

George W. Bush had the same problem with policy. Remember what John Dilulio said in his famous “Mayberry Machiavellis” letter to Ron Suskind?

In eight months, I heard many, many staff discussions, but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues. There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis, and they were even more overworked than the stereotypical, nonstop, 20-hour-a-day White House staff. Every modern presidency moves on the fly, but, on social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking — discussions by fairly senior people who meant Medicaid but were talking Medicare; near-instant shifts from discussing any actual policy pros and cons to discussing political communications, media strategy, et cetera. Even quite junior staff would sometimes hear quite senior staff pooh-pooh any need to dig deeper for pertinent information on a given issue.

This problem is now a couple of decades old and shows no signs of abating. Quite the opposite: Donald Trump makes Bush look like an analytical genius. But even on their own terms, conservative rule is going to end disastrously if both Trump and congressional Republicans don’t spend a little more time on policy analysis and implementation issues. There are only so many disasters that even their own base will put up with.

1Democrats, arguably, have the opposite problem—too much regard for policy analysis—which is why lefties are often so contemptuous of them.

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We Are Seeing a Return of the Mayberry Machiavellis

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Republicans Beg Their Party to Finally Do Something About Global Warming

by tfem31x Posted on February 8, 2017

Mother Jones

You wouldn’t know it by looking at Congress or the White House, but the GOP isn’t in complete lockstep when it comes to climate change denial. The deniers just happen to be the ones who hold all the political power within the party. They drown out the other side—the conservatives who are urging their party to actually do something about global warming.

The contrast was especially clear this week. Just a day after Republicans on the House science committee accused government scientists of fabricating climate research, a group of Republican luminaries who don’t currently hold public office held a press conference calling for climate action. Specifically, they released a report—titled “The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends“—in which they advocated a tax on carbon emissions.

The report, which was published by the Climate Leadership Council, calls for a tax on carbon starting at $40 per ton and rising over time, with revenue returned to taxpayers in the form of quarterly Social Security dividends. The authors include James Baker, who served as secretary of state and secretary of the treasury in the Reagan and first Bush administrations; Henry Paulson, who served as treasury secretary in the second Bush administration; Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz; and Martin Feldstein and Gregory Mankiw, who chaired the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under Reagan and George W. Bush, respectively. They see the tax as a replacement for the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations on greenhouse gases, including the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. The proposal would also include a border adjustment designed to tax products from countries that do not have a similar carbon price.

For these conservatives, a carbon tax would be like insuring against the worst risks of climate change—and they see it as a more efficient solution than EPA regulations. They describe their plan as “win-win”—even if some of them still claim to quibble with the science.

“For too long, we Republicans and conservatives haven’t occupied a real place at the table during the debate about global climate change,” Baker said at a Wednesday press conference. “Instead, we have tended to dispute the fact of climate change and particularly the extent to which man is responsible for any changes in the Earth’s climate. Now I need, in the interest of full disclosure, to tell you that I was and remain somewhat of a skeptic about the extent to which man is responsible for climate change. But I do think that…the risks are too great to ignore, and that we need some sort of insurance policy.”

None of the report’s authors currently hold public office. But Baker was scheduled to meet Wednesday with Vice President Mike Pence, Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner (who serves as a presidential adviser), and Trump adviser Gary Cohn to discuss the recommendations.

There’s a very different conversation underway in the House, where Republicans are obsessed with finding a smoking gun that would expose global warming as a myth. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who chairs the science committee, held a hearing yesterday titled “Making EPA Great Again,” during which he and his colleagues accused federal agencies of falsifying data and pushing a climate hoax.

Smith cited allegations made by former NOAA data scientist John Bates that the agency mishandled data used in a 2015 study challenging the belief that global warming had “paused” in recent years.

“Everything I have read suggests that NOAA cheated and got caught,” Smith said. At another point, he said NOAA scientists wanted to “falsify data to exaggerate global warming.” (Bates, for the record, told the Associated Press that his concerns don’t undermine the scientific consensus that humans are warming the planet and that his NOAA colleagues had done “nothing malicious.” He said the controversy is “really a story of not disclosing what you did. It’s not trumped up data in any way shape or form.”)

For the conservatives behind the Climate Leadership Council report, the debate about science isn’t the point. Benefits of a carbon tax “accrue regardless of one’s views on climate science,” the paper’s authors write.

But this message has hardly gotten anywhere with GOP politicians in the past. And even Baker cautioned against optimism that Trump’s White House will reverse course. “We have no assurance at all that this is going to be something that the administration will grab hold of,” he said. “We happen to believe that this will help make America great again, but that’s our view.”

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Republicans Beg Their Party to Finally Do Something About Global Warming

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Sean Spicer Imagines Coretta Scott King Would Change Her Mind About Jeff Sessions

by KOPManuela Posted on February 8, 2017

Mother Jones

Amid mounting outrage over Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as she read Coretta Scott King’s 1968 letter opposing the appointment of Sen. Jeff Sessions’ to the federal bench, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Wednesday said he “respectfully disagreed” with the assessment by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow that Sessions, Trump’s pick for attorney general, was a threat to civil rights.

“Like the late Arlen Specter,” Spicer said, “I can only hope that if she was still with us today, that after getting to know him and to see his record and his commitment to voting and civil rights,” she would have agreed with Specter when he said he regretted his vote to kill Sessions’ nomination for a federal judgeship decades before.

“I would hope that if she was still with us today,” Spicer continued, “she would share that sentiment.”

The remarks were swiftly mocked on social media, with many slamming Spicer for appearing to recast King’s views on civil rights and Sessions’ controversial record on the issue.

Warren was forced to stop reading from King’s letter, in which she accused Sessions of using his office to “chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens,” Tuesday night after McConnell invoked an arcane rule prohibiting senators from impugning one another. The incident sparked widespread protest among Democrats, who in turn used it as further evidence against President Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general.

Spicer’s statement on King came shortly after he angrily defended the president’s anti-terror raid in Yemen in January in which civilians and a Navy SEAL were killed. He suggested anyone who questioned the success of the mission was doing a “disservice” to the Navy SEAL killed in the mission.

When asked if his comments included Sen. John McCain, who previously described the raid as a “failure,” Spicer replied that the message was for “anybody.”

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Sean Spicer Imagines Coretta Scott King Would Change Her Mind About Jeff Sessions

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Yemen Shuts Down Further Ground Raids

by ToryGalgano Posted on February 8, 2017

Mother Jones

Our adventure in Yemen last week failed to kill its target; caused the death of numerous Yemeni civilians; resulted in one dead American sailor; and ended with the loss of a $70 million helicopter. Now comes another blow:

Angry at the civilian casualties incurred last month in the first commando raid authorized by President Trump, Yemen has withdrawn permission for the United States to run Special Operations ground missions against suspected terrorist groups in the country, according to American officials.

….The raid stirred immediate outrage among Yemeni government officials, some of whom accused the Trump administration of not fully consulting with them before the mission. Within 24 hours of the assault on a cluster of houses in a tiny village in mountainous central Yemen, the country’s foreign minister, Abdul Malik Al Mekhlafi, condemned the raid in a post on his official Twitter account as “extrajudicial killings.”

This is why decisions about risky operations normally come only after “the kind of rigorous review in the Situation Room that became fairly routine under President George W. Bush and Mr. Obama”—not over dinner, as this one was:

Mr. Trump will soon have to make a decision about the more general request by the Pentagon to allow more of such operations in Yemen without detailed, and often time-consuming, White House review. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will allow that, or how the series of mishaps that marked his first approval of such an operation may have altered his thinking about the human and political risks of similar operations.

This presents Trump with a dilemma. It sure looks like that detailed White House review is a good idea. On the other hand, we all know that he has nowhere near the patience to sit through regular, hours-long meetings in the Situation Room where he can’t have CNN on in the background. He’s learning that it’s not all fun and games being president, but it’s not clear how he’ll react to that.

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Yemen Shuts Down Further Ground Raids

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Your Final Trump Weirdness For the Day

by terriw5249 Posted on February 5, 2017

Mother Jones

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Your White House at work:

Some early moves by Trump officials have given hints about their priorities — and raised concerns within the administration.

….According to one U.S. official, national security aides have sought information about Polish incursions in Belarus, an eyebrow-raising request because little evidence of such activities appears to exist. Poland is among the Eastern European nations worried about Trump’s friendlier tone on Russia.

Read the story for more. Either somebody knows something the rest of us don’t, or else those somebodies are stone crazy. Do they really think Poland is sending troops into Belarus?

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Your Final Trump Weirdness For the Day

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The New Yorker’s Next Cover Features Lady Liberty with Her Light Snuffed Out

by DavidHbuuzadmk Posted on February 3, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The New Yorker has revealed the cover for its upcoming issue which will feature an image of Lady Liberty with her flame extinguished, a powerful illustration that comes amid the continued fallout from President Donald Trump’s executive order banning refugee resettlement and travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The image also marks a break with the magazine’s longstanding tradition of putting a version of its mascot Eustace Tilley on the cover of its anniversary issue. Françoise Mouly, the magazine’s art director, wrote in a blog post on Friday:

This year, as a response to the opening weeks of the Trump Administration, particularly the executive order on immigration, we feature John W. Tomac’s dark, unwelcoming image, “Liberty’s Flameout.”

“It used to be that the Statue of Liberty, and her shining torch, was the vision that welcomed new immigrants. And, at the same time, it was the symbol of American values,” Tomac says. “Now it seems that we are turning off the light.”

On Friday, the magazine also announced it was canceling its annual party for the White House Correspondent’s Dinner.

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The New Yorker’s Next Cover Features Lady Liberty with Her Light Snuffed Out

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Who’s to Blame For the Disaster in Yemen?

by FaustoHaines Posted on February 2, 2017

Mother Jones

The raid in Yemen that went pear shaped on Saturday was originally planned under the Obama administration. However, they were unable to complete their detailed assessment before Obama left office. Then Trump and his team took over and—apparently—decided to speed things up:

Mr. Trump’s new national security team, led by Mr. Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a retired general with experience in counterterrorism raids, has said that it wants to speed the decision-making when it comes to such strikes, delegating more power to lower-level officials so that the military may respond more quickly. Indeed, the Pentagon is drafting such plans to accelerate activities against the Qaeda branch in Yemen.

That’s the New York Times. Here’s the Washington Post on the same subject:

“We expect an easier approval cycle for operations under this administration,” another defense official said…“We really struggled with getting the Obama White House comfortable with getting boots on the ground in Yemen,” the former official said. “Since the new administration has come in, the approvals at the Pentagon appear to have gone up.”

And here is Reuters:

U.S. military officials told Reuters that Trump approved his first covert counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations. As a result, three officials said, the attacking SEAL team found itself dropping onto a reinforced al Qaeda base defended by landmines, snipers, and a larger than expected contingent of heavily armed Islamist extremists.

Reading between the lines, Trump figured that Obama was a wuss and spent too much time over-litigating this stuff. He wanted action, so he approved the mission. It went badly, and now military officials are blaming Trump, telling reporters that he went ahead “without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations.”

Is that really what happened? Or is the Pentagon throwing Trump under the bus for a failure that’s their fault? I suppose we might find out if Congress decided to investigate, but that would be out of character for them. After all, Congress rarely spends its time holding contentious hearings about missions in dangerous parts of the world that go south and get people killed. I can’t think of one recently, anyway.

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Who’s to Blame For the Disaster in Yemen?

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