We seem to have gone with Option 1, Limited Punitive Strikes.

Such action is meant to impose a modest cost on Mr. Assad or to send a message that future chemical weapons use will not be tolerated. At the same time, it is meant to avoid any risk of changing the course of the war, which could lead in unanticipated directions — like embroiling the United States in a larger conflict, or collapsing the Syrian government, which could, in turn, spread chaos that would risk millions of lives.

But past efforts at these kind of strikes have failed for two reasons. First, they do not change Mr. Assad’s calculus because, to Mr. Assad, this war is a matter of personal and national survival. If he believes chemical weapons are necessary to his survival, he will abandon them only in the face of some threat to his survival greater than the benefit he thinks they offer him. That requires an existential threat, which the United States is unwilling to impose because of the risks.

Pentagon Sucks the Air Out of Trump’s ‘Mission Accomplished’
by Spencer Ackerman, Daily Beast
04.14.18

In reviewing the Pentagon’s assessment of what U.S. warplanes and cruise missiles did last night to three suspected chemical storage and production facilities, U.S. defense representatives defined success in the most tactical of terms. That formulation resolved none of the relevant questions over the ultimate impact of a strike that Trump ordered after a substantially similar one last year failed to deter Bashar Assad from launching a chemical attack.
…
But the objective of the mission wasn’t to hit three Syrian chemical sites in and of themselves. It was, like last year’s strike on the Shayrat airfield, to deter Assad from future chemical attacks. And that depends on calculations that last night’s strike won’t resolve. Last year, for instance, Assad held off chemical attacks for a whole three months – resuming them, conspicuously, after Trump and his then-secretary of state signaled that they would work with Russia on a political resolution to the Syrian civil war and back away from a demand Assad relinquish power.

“We did the same strike last year,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat on the intelligence committee. “He still used chemical weapons on his own people. Why would this be different?”

Assad retains the capability to do so, the Pentagon conceded. While White said Assad’s ability to produce a chemical arsenal was “crippled,” her Joint Staff colleague, Lt. Gen. Frank McKenzie acknowledged, “I would not say they’d be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future.” The strikes, McKenzie added, ought to make Assad “think twice” before doing so.

That calculation remains outside the U.S.’ control. Assad’s hold on power is guaranteed by sponsors Russia and Iran, who are now diplomatically supported by America’s NATO ally Turkey in retaliation for Washington’s sponsorship of Ankara’s Kurdish enemies. The Syrians sent signals almost immediately after the strike that they considered it a flesh wound.
…
Beyond the strikes themselves, the Trump administration has not decided on its objectives on Syria – beyond a proximate defeat of Islamic State, which is unrelated to the fate of Assad – let alone a strategy to achieve them.

A tale told by an idiot. Full of Sound and Fury. Signifying nothing.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

President Abraham Lincoln assassinated; Titanic strikes iceberg; First videotape demonstrated; Loretta Lynn born.

The fight for justice against corruption is never easy. It never has been and never will be. It exacts a toll on our self, our families, our friends, and especially our children. In the end, I believe, as in my case, the price we pay is well worth holding on to our dignity.

Frank Serpico

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Better known to us as the hard working, hyper-intelligent, humble, and funny emptywheel, she’s been banned from most networks for her propensity for uh… earthy ejaculations of the type that sends prissy puritans to their fainting couches (“But what about the children!”) that will surprise no one with the vocabulary of a mildly advanced toddler that hasn’t been sequestered in a Monastary or Cloister under a vow of silence or a cult Home School.

But now, y’all gon’ done it. Op Ed in The New York Times. You go girl!

Trump Pardoned Libby to Protect Himself From Mueller
By Marcy Wheeler, The New York Times
April 13, 2018

“There is a cloud over the White House as to what happened. Don’t you think the F.B.I., the grand jury, the American people are entitled to a straight answer?”

With those words, uttered over a decade ago, Patrick Fitzgerald, a prosecutor appointed as special counsel to investigate whether the president and his closest aides had broken the rules of espionage for their own political gain, sealed the conviction of I. Lewis Libby Jr., known as Scooter, for obstructing his investigation into the White House.

Even with that conviction, we never learned the real story about whether Vice President Dick Cheney had ordered Mr. Libby, his chief of staff, to leak the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson to the press in retaliation for a Times Op-Ed by her husband, Joseph Wilson, calling out the president’s lies. We never learned whether Mr. Cheney gave those orders with the approval of the president or on his own. That’s because President George W. Bush added to the obstruction by commuting Mr. Libby’s sentence, ensuring that nothing would happen to the firewall that protected his own White House. Mr. Libby wouldn’t go to prison, but neither would he lose his Fifth Amendment privilege, which could make it easy to compel further testimony about his bosses.

On Friday another president with a special counsel investigation raging around him pardoned Mr. Libby. “I don’t know Mr. Libby,” President Trump said in the pardon announcement. “But for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly. Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life.”

The move was entirely symbolic. Since his conviction in 2007, Mr. Libby had regained the two main privileges a felony conviction had stripped from him: his right to vote and his law license. This pardon will change nothing in Mr. Libby’s life.

“What I lost was the ability to do my job, which I loved,” Ms. Wilson told me when asked about the pardon of Mr. Libby. “I developed expertise in making sure bad guys don’t get nuclear weapons. That’s what I’d be doing, and no one would know my name.”

Nor will the pardon of Mr. Libby do anything for the people who risk their lives to cooperate with the C.I.A., who were put at risk by Ms. Wilson’s exposure.

Mr. Trump’s action does nothing to change the past.

But it might change the lives or convictions of people whom President Trump does know: his own personal firewall. By pardoning Mr. Libby, Mr. Trump sends a message to Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and any of his other close aides who are facing or may face potential prosecution pursuant to the investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel.

Mr. Manafort was indicted in October for hiding that he was working for a Russian-backed Ukrainian party while lobbying in the United States; charges against him could put him away for the rest of his life. F.B.I. agents raided the home and offices of Mr. Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen this week; according to the Department of Justice, he is under criminal investigation by the Southern District of New York, and he may face charges of bank and wire fraud for paying hush money to prevent news of past sexual affairs from becoming public during the election. By pardoning Mr. Libby, Mr. Trump sends a message to those who might incriminate him in crimes related to conspiring with Russians to tamper with the election: The message is that he will rectify any sadness that protecting a president might cause.

The thing is, Mr. Trump is unlikely to be able to use his pardon power to get out of his legal jam. That’s because several of his potential firewalls — Mr. Manafort, Mr. Cohen and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — could be charged at the state level for the financial crimes they’re suspected of. A federal pardon would simply move their prosecution beyond Mr. Trump’s control.

And there are many more people who can incriminate the president, whereas in the investigation into Ms. Wilson’s exposure, Mr. Libby was one of the only people who could say whether the president had authorized the leak of a C.I.A. officer’s identity. Already, three key witnesses have agreed to cooperate with Mr. Mueller against the president, so it’s probably too late to start silencing witnesses.

Finally, neither Mr. Trump nor his thoroughly outmatched legal team knows the full exposure he or potential witnesses face. Given the involvement of Russians trying to undermine the United States, the evidence Mr. Mueller may already have collected could well be even uglier than deliberately burning a C.I.A. spy for political gain.

That makes it a lot harder to pull off what George Bush did — protect his firewall.

Finally, Mr. Trump is running out of time. As NBC reported this week, Mr. Mueller is already preparing the first of two reports to Congress. This one will lay out the ways the president has already obstructed his investigation into election tampering. It will reportedly include the discussion of pardons with Mr. Manafort and Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Mike Flynn (who pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in November). In other words, within weeks Mr. Mueller will inform Congress that President Trump has been offering pardons specifically to undercut the investigation into his actions.

Mr. Trump’s pardon of Mr. Libby makes it crystal clear that he thinks even the crime of making the country less safe can be excused if done in the service of protecting the president. But it doesn’t mean the pardon will protect him.

Check out that URL- https://www. Stinking nytimes.com/2018/04/13/opinion/trump-scooter-libby-pardon.html!

We may not always agree (though we do this time), but we are always happy for your success and wish you more of it.

Alexander Butterfield was a student at UCLA where he was a friend of H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. He joined the Air Force in 1948 and was a gunnery instructor before transferring to the 86th Fighter Wing out of Germany where he became a member of their aerobatics team. He was an operations officer in Knoxville and a Squadron Commander in Okinawa.

During the Vietnam War he did low and medium level tactical air reconnaissance and flew 98 combat missions. He got a Distinguished Flying Cross for that.

In 1965 he was assigned as a military assistant to the special assistant to the Secretary of Defense and spent about half his time in the Pentagon and half his time at the White House. In 1967 he was promoted to Colonel and sent to Australia as an F-111 project officer.

Then his military career died.

In 1968 he discovered he’d have to spend another 2 years in Australia which meant he was never going to advance to General. He found out his college chum H.R Haldeman was going to be Nixon’s Chief of Staff and asked him for a job. Eventually he got one as Haldeman’s Deputy so he resigned from the Air Force and started working at the White House full time.

He didn’t like Nixon much.

Everything Haldeman and Butterfield did was designed to make Nixon feel comfortable and relaxed, never surprised or “spooked”. “If you don’t do things exactly as I do, it could upset [Nixon],” Haldeman told him.

Next to Haldeman, Butterfield was the most powerful aide in the White House. He met with Nixon and Haldeman every day at 2 P.M. to plan the following day’s activities. He “completely controlled” what paperwork Nixon saw, and logged memos. He accompanied Haldeman on all domestic trips, co-supervising traveling White House staff with Haldeman, and ran the White House when Haldeman and Nixon went on foreign trips. Every meeting the president attended required “talking points” for the president written by an appropriate staff person as well as an after-meeting summary by that person, and Butterfield oversaw the process by which both documents were completed and filed. Butterfield also oversaw all FBI investigations requested by the White House, which included routine background checks of potential employees as well as politically motivated investigations. Other than Haldeman, no one had a more intimate knowledge of Nixon’s working style, the daily operations of the White House, what Nixon may have read, or who Nixon may have met.

Butterfield was also the person who primarily managed people as they met with Nixon. This included ensuring people arrived on time, and that they were manipulated so they did not stay too long. Butterfield also oversaw Nixon’s often-distant relationship with his wife, Pat. Late in 1970, the president’s aides lost confidence in Constance C. Stuart, Pat Nixon’s staff director and press secretary, and Butterfield was assigned responsibility for overseeing the First Lady’s events and publicity. The day after the 1972 presidential election, Pat Nixon confronted her husband over what she perceived to be Oval Office interference with her staff. The deputy assistant to the president, Dwight Chapin, and later Butterfield, were appointed to act as liaison between the two staffs.

So, Intern stuff. “I’d like a Latte Grande, pick up my suit at the cleaners, I need a gift for my wife (something nice, you know what she likes, and sign it “Lovey Poo”), and god damn it that Latte better be hot when you get back- the last one was lukewarm!”

But… he also oversaw the installation of the secret White House taping system.

Yes, that one.

In March of 1973 Butterfield was finally able to ditch the White House for the FAA but by that time Watergate was already raging.

About June 20 or 21, Special White House Counsel for Watergate J. Fred Buzhardt provided the committee’s Chief Minority (Republican) Counsel, Fred “Law and Order” Thompson, with a document intended to impugn (John “Cancer on the Presidency”) Dean’s testimony. Buzhardt’s document included almost verbatim quotations from meetings Nixon had with Dean. Thompson initially violated an agreement under which the majority and minority staff would share all information. When committee Majority Investigator Scott Armstrong obtained the document, he realized the document indicated the existence of a taping system.

You know a funny thing about Lawyers? Many of them hate being Lawyers and move on to something else.

Butterfield was questioned by Senate Watergate Committee staff Scott Armstrong, G. Eugene Boyce, Marianne Brazer, and Donald Sanders (deputy minority counsel) on Friday, July 13, 1973, in a background interview prior to his public testimony before the full committee. Butterfield was brought before the committee because he was White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman’s top deputy and was the only person other than Haldeman who knew as much about the president’s day-to-day behavior.

The critical line of questioning was conducted by Donald Sanders. Armstrong had given a copy of Buzhardt’s report to Butterfield; now Sanders asked if the quotations in it might have come from notes. Butterfield said no, that the quotations were too detailed. In addition, Butterfield said that neither staff nor the president kept notes of one-on-one private meetings with Nixon. When asked where the quotations might have come from, Butterfield said he did not know. Then Sanders asked if there was any validity to John Dean’s hypothesis that the White House had taped conversations in the Oval Office. Butterfield replied, “I was wondering if someone would ask that. There is tape in the Oval Office.” Butterfield then told the investigators that, while he had hoped that no one would ask about the taping system, he had previously decided he would disclose its existence if asked a direct question. Butterfield then testified extensively about when the taping system was installed and how it worked, and told the staff members, “Everything was taped … as long as the President was in attendance. There was not so much as a hint that something should not be taped.” Butterfield later said that he assumed the committee knew about the taping system, since they had already interviewed Haldeman and Higby.

All present recognized the significance of this disclosure, and, as former political adviser to President Gerald Ford, James M. Cannon put it, “Watergate was transformed”.

Hmm…

Trump’s allies worry that federal investigators may have seized recordings made by his attorney
By Ashley Parker, Carol D. Leonnig, Josh Dawsey and Tom Hamburger, Washington Post
April 12 at 7:29 PM

President Trump’s personal attorney Michael D. Cohen sometimes taped conversations with associates, according to three people familiar with his practice, and allies of the president are worried that the recordings were seized by federal investigators in a raid of Cohen’s office and residences this week.

Cohen, who served for a decade as a lawyer at the Trump Organization and is a close confidant of Trump, was known to store the conversations using digital files and then replay them for colleagues, according to people who have interacted with him.

“We heard he had some proclivity to make tapes,” said one Trump adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. “Now we are wondering, who did he tape? Did he store those someplace where they were actually seized? . . . Did they find his recordings?”
…
It is unknown whether Cohen taped conversations between himself and Trump. But two people familiar with Cohen’s practices said he recorded both business and political conversations. One associate said Trump knew of Cohen’s practice because the attorney would often play him recordings Cohen had made of his conversations with other top Trump advisers.

“It was his standard practice to do it,” this person said.

Legal experts said Cohen’s taped conversations would be viewed by prosecutors as highly valuable.

“If you are looking for evidence, you can’t do any better than people talking on tape,” said Nick Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor.

Such recordings “would be considered a gold mine,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University who specializes in legal ethics.

“The significance is 9.5 to 10 on a 10-point scale,” he added, noting that investigators know “that when people speak on the phone, they are not guarded. They don’t imagine that the conversation will surface.”
…
Cohen wanted his business calls on tape so he could use them later as leverage, one person said. Cohen frequently noted that under New York law, only one party had to consent to the taping of a conversation, this person added.

During the 2016 race, Cohen — who did not have a formal role on the campaign — had a reputation among campaign staff as someone to avoid, in part because he was believed to be secretly taping conversations.

In one instance, Cohen played a recording of a conversation he had with someone else to a Trump campaign official to demonstrate that he was in a position to challenge that person’s veracity if necessary, an associate recalled.

Cohen indicated that he had something to use against the person he had taped, the associate said.

One outside Trump adviser said Cohen may have begun recording his conversations in an attempt to emulate his boss, who has long boasted — often with no evidence — about secretly taping private conversations.

In May, for instance, a report appeared in the New York Times detailing fired FBI director James B. Comey’s account of a one-on-one dinner he had with the president, during which he said Trump asked him to pledge his loyalty to the president and he declined. Shortly after, Trump took to Twitter to cast doubt on Comey’s version of events, seeming to imply that he had secretly recorded their encounter.

“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump wrote.

At the time, it was unclear whether Trump truly possessed tapes of his conversation with Comey or was simply trying to intimidate him. And ultimately, just over a month later, Trump cleared up the mystery by admitting in a duo of tweets that he had not, in fact, recorded Comey.

“With all of the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea whether there are ‘tapes’ or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings,” he wrote.

Now these recordings, if they still exist, must pass the test of being non-privileged communications in order to be available to prosecutors. Trump insists that any threats of tapes he personally made (say… James Comey) are empty braggadocio.

“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump wrote.

At the time, it was unclear whether Trump truly possessed tapes of his conversation with Comey or was simply trying to intimidate him. And ultimately, just over a month later, Trump cleared up the mystery by admitting in a duo of tweets that he had not, in fact, recorded Comey.

“With all of the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea whether there are ‘tapes’ or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings,” he wrote.

Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer and executive editor of Bloomberg View, wrote a column in the wake of Trump’s taping claim saying that Comey likely had little reason to worry. In the piece, O’Brien recounted that Trump frequently made a similar boast to him.

“Back in the early 2000s, Trump used to tell me all the time that he was recording me when I covered him as reporter for the New York Times,” O’Brien wrote. “He also said the same thing when I was writing a biography of him, ‘Trump Nation.’ I never thought he was, but who could be sure?”

But after Trump sued him for libel shortly after his biography came out, O’Brien’s lawyers deposed Trump in December 2007 — during which Trump admitted he had not, in fact, clandestinely taped O’Brien.

“I’m not equipped to tape-record,” Trump said in the deposition. “I may have said it once or twice to him just to — on the telephone, because everything I said to him he’d write incorrectly; so just to try and keep it honest.”

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Karl Marx writes-

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

An explosion cripples Apollo 13 on its way to the Moon; President Thomas Jefferson born; Pope John Paul II visits a synagogue; Actor Sydney Poitier achieves an Oscar milestone; Golfer Tiger Woods wins the Masters for the first time.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Thomas Jefferson

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