Archive for 2016
August 23, 2016
I BLAME GLOBAL WARMING: Leonardo DiCaprio Is Having His Worst Week Ever.
NUCLEAR WESSEL: Anti-Trump operatives targeted in online ‘catfishing’ scheme.
Steven Wessel is a convicted con man with a Big Apple flair, feigning connections to Ronald Reagan and pretending to be an Oxford man while bilking rich Manhattanites of $750,000. But his last scam before heading to prison this spring targeted a very different kind of mark: Republican operatives opposed to Donald Trump.
And now those operatives are wondering who put Wessel up to it.
Assuming a variety of fake online identities, including that of a female solicitor in England, Wessel gushed in emails, phone calls and Twitter messages about (made-up) extramarital affairs with the likes of the late Lee Atwater, showered marks with gift cards to the swanky Mandarin Oriental, and invited them to go pheasant-hunting in Scotland — all in an apparent attempt to glean more about the operatives and their intentions regarding Trump. That was until federal prosecutors learned of the activity and a judge revoked Wessel’s bail in April, sending him to prison to begin serving a 55-month sentence ahead of schedule.
In a campaign season marked by the mind-bending, the — until now unreported —caper of Wessel’s months-long “catfishing” of operatives Rick Wilson, Liz Mair and Cheri Jacobus ranks among more bizarre episodes. It could get more bizarre still. The targets of the scheme do not believe that Wessel, described by his own lawyer as mentally ill, was acting alone. This month Jacobus, who said she believes Wessel was working in concert with allies of Trump, renewed her efforts to get the FBI to investigate the scheme.
Politics ain’t beanbag. Read the whole thing.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Lessons From The Cajun Navy: Don’t Wait For Help. Be The Help.
THIS ISN’T THE 21st CENTURY I WAS PROMISED:
- Worshippers of a genocidal dictator throw a party in Australia.
- One explanation of how democracy died in Venezuela.
- German girls given temporary tattoos labeled “No” in the hopes that magical thinking will prevent swimming pool sex attacks.
- Tinderbox at the Gates of Europe: Expert warns real migration surge is on its way.
- Trump or Clinton? Either Way, Get Ready for More Intrusive Government.
- The Coming Free Speech Apocalypse.
- Jimmy Kimmel Has Hillary Clinton Open Jar Of Pickles To Demonstrate Her State Of Health.
IN THE MAIL: From director Gloria Z. Greenfield, Unmasked Judeophobia.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1202.
SIGN OF THE TIMES, MESS WITH YOUR MIND:
Shot: Is God Dead?
—Headline, Time magazine, April 8, 1966.
Chaser: Why is God not female?
—Headline, the BBC, June 2nd, 2015.
Hangover: Is God Transgender?
—Headline, the New York Times, August. 12, 2016.
And if anybody would know the answer to that “question that nobody is asking” (as James Taranto would say), it’s those expert theologians at the Times.
CANADA ABANDONS ITS ONLY DEEP WATER ARCTIC PORT: The reasons were economic. The concern is Arctic sovereignty.
THIS SEEMS LIKE IT WOULD GET MORE ATTENTION IF IT INVOLVED A REPUBLICAN AND DONALD TRUMP: Dem in West Virginia governor race won’t support Clinton.
Jim Justice, a billionaire who owns multiple coal mines in the state, told a talk radio host Monday that Clinton’s environmental policies, and their effects on the coal industry, prevent him from supporting her.
“I cannot be a supporter of Hillary Clinton,” Justice said Monday on West Virginia MetroNews’s radio show “Talkline.”
“The reason I can’t be is her position on coal is diametrically, completely wrong in many, many different ways.”
Clinton attracted anger across West Virginia and other coal-dependent regions when she said in May that, under her presidency, “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
She later said she made a “misstatement” when highlighting her proposals to help economically devastated coal communities.
But she has pledged to double down on President Obama’s environmental policies, including regulations harmful to the coal industry like the Clean Power Plan.
Justice, meanwhile, sees a good future ahead for coal and criticizes people who say the industry’s decline cannot be stopped.
Why does Hillary Clinton hate the hardworking men and women of Appalachia?
MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE: FBI Investigating Possible ISIS-Inspired Stabbing Attack in Virginia.
JAPANESE CLAIM CHINA DREW A RED LINE: From The Japan Times:
China strongly warned a high-level Japanese official around late June that Tokyo should not send Self-Defense Forces to join U.S. operations that test the freedom of navigation in the disputed South China Sea, diplomatic sources said Saturday. Japan will “cross a red line” if SDF vessels take part in so-called freedom of navigation operations, Ambassador Cheng Yonghua told the official, the sources said. Cheng even hinted at military action.
The SDF is the official name of the Japanese military. “SDF vessels” are the Japanese navy. Obama’s Syrian “red line” vanished, but that’s Obama. Read the article. China and Japan have exchanged several serious warnings.
GOOD NEWS FOR FRACKERS: Caracas Could Unwittingly Balance the Oil Market:
The oil market has been oversupplied for more than two years now, as upstart U.S. shale producers and sluggish global demand have created a glut that has seen prices tumble from more than $110 per barrel in June of 2014 down below $50 today. This has understandably caused great consternation for producers around the world, but it’s been especially unwelcome for petrostates whose national budgets had grown accustomed to those heady $100+ days. OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, has thus far opted not to cut production, choosing to endure rather than intervene, but that’s pushed many of the cartel’s poorer members towards fiscal ruin.
As a result, delegates from both within and without OPEC will meet in Algeria next month to discuss a plan to freeze oil production and attempt to incite a price rebound. However, this strategy failed in Doha four months ago, and there’s little reason to expect it might have the sort of impact its designers will be hoping for. But Venezuela could unwittingly accomplish what all of this planning likely won’t. . . .
There’s an unmistakable irony to the fact that one of OPEC’s most desperate members—one of the petrostates pushing hardest for a freeze deal—could itself solve the global glut problem through its own struggles to keep output up. Venezuela is circling the drain, and crude producers from U.S. shale formations to Saudi Arabia’s massive oil fields could all stand to benefit.
Poor Venezuela. That’s a real spell of “bad luck” they’re having.
ABC’S RICK KLEIN: It’s not “a few more emails,” and it’s a big deal, actually:
“We’ve already released, I don’t know, 30,000 plus,” Hillary Clinton told Jimmy Kimmel Monday, “so what’s a few more?” To answer that question: quite a lot. Clinton’s defense of her own behavior in the never-ending story of her own email server has been built on a few pillars that have shown cracks: that the practice was permitted and had precedent, that she never sent or received classified material, that she released all of her work-related emails. Colin Powell and James Comey have weakened the first two defenses. Now Clinton herself is seemingly acknowledging that there are more emails that weren’t released. That’s actually now already established. The emails disclosed by Judicial Watch include another 20 involving the secretary of state that weren’t part of the official State Department release, according to the conservative group. Maybe the rest, as Clinton told Kimmel, are so boring as to be embarrassing. But the real embarrassment could be even more disclosures, all the way through October, of work-related emails that Clinton and her team said did not exist.
And what we know is, most likely, just the tip of the iceberg.
PIVOT: Trump’s immigration plan: Deport ‘bad ones,’ treat ‘the rest’ like Obama does.
Donald Trump on Monday detailed how he would deal with the millions of immigrants illegally living in the United States: Enforce laws that are already on the books and continue to do what President Obama is doing, although “perhaps with a lot more energy.”
This strategy marks a sudden change for the Republican nominee, who has presented himself as a politically incorrect outsider who is not afraid to take extreme measures to combat illegal immigration, such as deporting 11 million people or constructing a massive wall along the southern border. For more than a year, Trump insisted that all illegal immigrants “have got to go” and that he would create a “deportation force” to carry out the task.
Trump struck a starkly different tone during an interview with Bill O’Reilly of Fox News that aired on Monday night. Trump said he would separate the country’s undocumented immigrants into two groups: The “bad ones” who would be kicked out of the country as soon as he takes office and “everybody else” who would go through the same process that the Obama Administration is currently using.
“Perhaps?”
GEORGE KORDA: Donald Trump and being ‘Campfielded.’
DONALD RALLIES HIS OHIO SUPPORTERS IN LEBRON’S HOUSE, and Roger Simon and his camera were there. Did both men bring their A-games? You make the call!
REPORT: 30k Illegal Immigrants Came From Countries of Terrorist Concern.
That’s bound to happen, given that terrorists thrive under the same conditions that produce huge numbers of migrants. The question is whether those tens of thousands are receiving any kind of scrutiny — something their illegal status makes unlikely at best.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Judge Orders Immediate Review of 14,900 Hillary Clinton Emails.
A federal judge prodded the State Department to quickly review a batch of 14,900 recently discovered emails as the controversy over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s correspondence while she served as America’s top diplomat continued to simmer.
Judge James Boasberg, in an order, set a deadline for the department to complete the email review by Sept. 22 to determine which ones contain sensitive government information and which are strictly personal conversations. That could pave the way for the emails to be released as early as mid-October.
October is always a nice month for surprises.
YOU SPELLED “DELIVERING THOUSANDS OF NEW VOTES FOR HILLARY” WRONG: Terry McAuliffe’s Second Try at Restoring Felon Voting Rights.
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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Lessons From The Cajun Navy: Don’t Wait For Help. Be The Help.