|
An American Editorial Cartoonist Has Been Fired for Skewering Trump. He Likely Won't Be the Last. |
 |
|
Saturday, 16 June 2018 13:40 |
|
Telnaes writes: "'Oh, good lord.' That was my reaction the day after the election of Donald Trump in November of 2016, when it dawned on me that I would be serving my year as president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists during the same time as the guy who wanted to 'open up' libel laws and weaken the First Amendment so he could sue journalists more easily."
Rob Rogers, who was fired as an editorial cartoonist for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Thursday, had been with the paper since 1993 and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1999. (photo: Ross Mantle/NYT)
An American Editorial Cartoonist Has Been Fired for Skewering Trump. He Likely Won't Be the Last.
By Ann Telnaes, The Washington Post
16 June 18
  h, good lord.”
That was my reaction the day after the election of Donald Trump in November of 2016, when it dawned on me that I would be serving my year as president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists during the same time as the guy who wanted to “open up” libel laws and weaken the First Amendment so he could sue journalists more easily. Instead of the usual loss of jobs for editorial cartoonists that a president of the AAEC has to address during his or her tenure, now I’d be dealing with a much more fundamental threat to our profession: a president of the United States who has no idea or respect for the institution of a free press and its role in a democracy.
I did worry that editorial cartooning would be the next target of a president so enamored of visuals. That didn’t happen. In retrospect, I’m fairly certain it’s because Trump doesn’t read; he gets all his news from the television (Fox News) and uses Twitter as his megaphone. And I’m guessing his staff doesn’t cut out cartoons and tape them to the White House refrigerator so he will see them as he goes for his regular two scoops of ice cream. But with the firing of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cartoonist Rob Rogers, we now see that suppressing a free press can be accomplished without an authoritarian president’s orders. Michael Cohen isn’t the only “fixer” Trump has at his disposal.
Rogers has been the editorial cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for more than 25 years. Most working cartoonists have had an occasional idea spiked by his or her editor. But in the past few weeks, editorial director Keith Burris and publisher John Robinson Block have refused to publish six of Rogers’s cartoons, all criticizing Trump or his policies. Block and Burris have also rejected many of Rogers’s rough sketch ideas for several months.
This wasn’t the first time Block has used his position to defend President Trump’s actions; in January he demanded an editorial run in the Post-Gazette and the Toledo Blade (where he is also the publisher) supporting Trump’s use of the term “shithole countries.”
I realize now I didn’t recognize this other danger of an authoritarian president: his enablers and the willing supporters who squash dissent and help attack the free press and subvert the Constitution. The fact that Trump will use any opportunity to spread lies and whip up hatred toward journalists only enables his powerful supporters in the media to do his dirty work for him. In April, another disturbing example of journalistic manipulation was exposed when a video surfaced showing news anchors from 45 Sinclair-owned stations reciting word for word the same script criticizing the mainstream media and spouting the “fake news” accusations that Trump uses in his diatribes. While Trump used the opportunity to blast its critics and offer his support for the “superior” Sinclair Broadcasting, he hadn’t orchestrated this abuse of journalistic integrity. He didn’t have to; there were others willing to do it for him.
Through satire, humor and pointed caricatures, editorial cartoonists criticize leaders and governments that are behaving badly. The purpose of an editorial cartoonist is to hold politicians and powerful institutions accountable — and we all know how little President Trump thinks he, his family or his sycophants should be held accountable. Rogers was the first American editorial cartoonist to lose his job as a result, but he won’t be the last. Trump has many “fixers.”
 |
|
FOCUS: Big Oil CEOs Needed a Climate Change Reality Check. The Pope Delivered |
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=19600"><span class="small">Bill McKibben, Guardian UK</span></a>
|
|
Saturday, 16 June 2018 11:27 |
|
McKibben writes: "You kind of expect popes to talk about spiritual stuff, kind of the way you expect chefs to discuss spices or tree surgeons to make small talk about overhanging limbs."
Bill McKibben. (photo: Wolfgang Schmidt)
Big Oil CEOs Needed a Climate Change Reality Check. The Pope Delivered
By Bill McKibben, Guardian UK
16 June 18
At a gathering of fossil fuel executives at the Vatican, Pope Francis spoke much-needed common sense about climate change
 ou kind of expect popes to talk about spiritual stuff, kind of the way you expect chefs to discuss spices or tree surgeons to make small talk about overhanging limbs.
Which is why it was so interesting this week to hear Pope Francis break down the climate debate in very practical and very canny terms, displaying far more mathematical insight than your average world leader and far more strategic canniness than your average journalist. In fact, with a few deft sentences, he laid bare the hypocrisy that dominates much of the climate debate.
The occasion was the gathering of fossil fuel executives at the Vatican, one of a series of meetings to mark the third anniversary of Laudato Si, his majestic encyclical on global warming. The meetings were closed, but by all accounts big oil put forward its usual anodyne arguments: any energy transition must be slow, moving too fast to renewable energy would hurt the poor by raising prices, and so forth.
In response, Francis graciously thanked the oil executives for attending, and for “developing more careful approaches to the assessment of climate risk”. But then he got down to business. “Is it enough?” he asked. “Will we turn the corner in time? No one can answer that with certainty, but with each month that passes, the challenge of energy transition becomes more pressing.” Two and a half years after the Paris climate talks, he pointed out, “carbon dioxide emissions and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases remain very high. This is disturbing and a cause for real concern.” Indeed.
What’s really “worrying”, though, “is the continued search for new fossil fuel reserves, whereas the Paris agreement clearly urged keeping most fossil fuels underground”. And in that small sentence he calls the bluff on most of what passes for climate action among nations and among fossil fuel companies. Yes, Donald Trump notwithstanding, most countries have begun to take some steps to reduce demand for energy over time. Yes, oil companies have begun to grudgingly issue “climate risk reports” and divert minuscule percentages of their research budgets to renewables.
But no one has been willing to face the fact that we have to leave more than 80% of known fossil fuel reserves underground if we have any chance of meeting the Paris targets. No company has been willing to commit to leaving the coal and oil and gas in the earth, and almost no nation has been willing to make them do so. Instead, the big fossil fuel countries continue to aid and abet the big fossil fuel companies in the push for more mining and drilling. In Australia, the Turnbull government backs a massive new coalmine; in Canada, the Trudeau government literally buys a pipeline to keep the tar sands expanding; in the US, the federal government might as well be a wholly owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel companies.
In fact, as Francis points out, it’s not just that these companies and countries are committed to digging up the reserves they currently have. Even more insanely, they’re out there exploring for more. Companies like Exxon devote billions and billions of dollars to finding new oil fields, even though we have far more oil than we could ever safely burn.
All of this is morally wrong, as Francis points out. “Decisive progress cannot be made without an increased awareness that all of us are part of one human family, united by bonds of fraternity and solidarity. Only by thinking and acting with constant concern for this underlying unity that overrides all differences, only by cultivating a sense of universal intergenerational solidarity, can we set out really and resolutely on the road ahead,” he says.
Which is great – it’s the job of religious leaders to remind us to think beyond our own self-interest.
But Francis also understands that our current approach makes no mathematical sense. We can’t have a nice, slow, easy transition because we can’t put barely any more carbon in the atmosphere. We must solve the problem of energy access for the poor by using renewables, not fossil fuel, because “our desire to ensure energy for all must not lead to the undesired effect of a spiral of extreme climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, harsher environments and increased levels of poverty”. Above all, we’ve got to pay as much attention to actual reality as we do to political reality: “Civilization requires energy, but energy use must not destroy civilization!”
It’s odd to have the pope schooling energy executives on the math of carbon. But actually, no odder than NFL quarterbacks schooling politicians on racial injustice, or high school kids schooling a nation on the danger of guns. Amid the unprecedented wave of nonsense coming from DC, it’s good to remember that there are still people of all kinds able to pierce through the static and the shouting. Good common sense speaks even more loudly when it comes from unexpected corners.
|
|
|
FOCUS: Why Mueller Really Wanted to Put Manafort in Jail |
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=46833"><span class="small">Barbara McQuade, The Daily Beast</span></a>
|
|
Saturday, 16 June 2018 10:58 |
|
McQuade writes: "President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was in court today to review his bond status and to be arraigned on a superseding indictment."
Robert Mueller. (photo: James Berglie/TNS)
Why Mueller Really Wanted to Put Manafort in Jail
By Barbara McQuade, The Daily Beast
16 June 18
While he was out on bail, Trump’s old campaign chairman was caught allegedly trying to tamper with witnesses.
 resident Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was in court today to review his bond status and to be arraigned on a superseding indictment. At issue in both matters is his alleged tampering with witnesses in the underlying case filed against him by special counsel Robert Mueller.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson decided to revoke Manafort’s bond and detain him while he awaits trial.
Manafort was charged in October in federal court in the District of Columbia with failing to register as a foreign agent, conspiring to launder money, and making false statements, among other crimes, in relation to his lobbying activity for the government of Ukraine and political parties there. Manafort was later charged in the Eastern District of Virginia with bank fraud and tax violations. His co-defendant in both cases, former Trump deputy campaign chairman Richard Gates, has pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the government.
Last week, Mueller filed a motion to revoke Manafort’s bond and detain him pending trial based on alleged witness tampering. A few days later, a grand jury returned a superseding indictment alleging obstruction of justice and conspiracy based on the same conduct.
In this instance, Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national and longtime Manafort business associate, are charged with attempting to influence the testimony of two potential witnesses.
The witnesses are identified in court documents as D1 and D2, principals of a public relations firm. The superseding indictment alleges that on Feb. 23, Manafort telephoned D1, and in the ensuing several days, he and Kilimnik used an encrypted text messaging application to contact D1 and D2. Their messages reminded D1 and D2 that their unregistered lobbying activity occurred in Europe, and not in the United States, where it would be illegal—a narrative that Mueller argues is contrary to the evidence in the case. In effect, Mueller argues, Manafort is implicitly asking them to lie to cover Manafort’s crime. While the evidence is somewhat circumstantial, the superseding indictment alleges that D1 stated that he understood Manafort and Kilimnik’s outreach to be an effort to “suborn perjury.”
The timing of the outreach is also significant. When Gates pleaded guilty in February, a superseding indictment was filed removing Gates as a defendant and adding allegations about additional lobbying activity by a group known as “the Hapsburg group,” activity that is at issue in the text messages. Manafort’s outreach to the witnesses began the very next day.
Some have argued that the motion to revoke bond is a hardball tactic by Mueller to force Manafort to come to the table and cooperate in the Russia investigation. If Manafort is jailed, the thinking goes, he will feel more pressure to start talking immediately. But this thinking seems off the mark. It seems more likely that Mueller is prosecuting what he sees to be a serious crime.
For one thing, Manafort is likely facing a lengthy prison sentence anyway for his various financial crimes and false statements. He doesn’t need to be inside a jail to realize that. To date, he has fought the charges. It may be that Manafort believes he is innocent, though from the face of the indictment and the guilty plea by Gates, the evidence of his guilt appears to be strong. The case is based mostly on documents, which are more difficult to refute than cases based on witness testimony. A case becomes even stronger when the defendant demonstrates what is known as “consciousness of guilt” by asking witnesses to lie for him, as Manafort is alleged to have done here.
Or Manafort may believe that even though he is in fact guilty, he can persuade a jury that he has not been proven guilty. And even if not, Manafort may think that he can receive a pardon after conviction at trial. Or it may be that Manafort knows that he can wait just a little longer before he is forced to decide. Manafort need not agree to cooperate until his first trial date in July. He is likely waiting to see what happens with his pending motions to suppress evidence. If he is successful in suppressing evidence, then maybe the case against him becomes weaker. None of that changes if Manafort is sitting in jail.
Instead of trying to pressure Manafort to cooperate, it seems more likely that Mueller is taking action because obstruction of justice is a serious crime, and he wants it to stop, in this case and others. While prosecutors exercise discretion and often decide to refrain from bringing charges, they will always take seriously a case involving obstruction of justice. That’s because obstruction of justice, especially witness tampering, attacks the integrity of the criminal justice system. Obstruction of justice is a crime against the court as well as society. It is not a surprise that witness tampering is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
As Mueller argues in his brief, “the timing, content, and coordination by Manafort and Kilimnik” are sufficient to establish probable cause of witness tampering. A condition of Manafort’s bond is that he “not commit any federal, state, or local crime,” and obstruction of justice certainly qualifies. Because a grand jury has already found probable cause by returning an indictment on this issue, under the Bail Reform Act, the judge “shall” enter an order of revocation and detention, if the judge finds that (A) no conditions will assure that the defendant will not flee or pose a danger to another person or the community or (B) the person is unlikely to abide by any conditions of release. In addition, probable cause creates a rebuttable presumption of detention. That means that it will be up to Manafort’s lawyers to persuade Judge Jackson that there are conditions that can assure that Manafort will appear, will not pose a danger, and will comply with bond conditions.
That last part will be the hardest. A defendant who has already violated bond conditions often has a hard time persuading a judge that this time he means it when he swears to comply.
Another concern here is that if Mueller caught Manafort reaching out to these two witnesses, who else might he be reaching out to, either directly or through intermediaries? Detaining Manafort would curtail that behavior by restraining his ability to communicate with witnesses and by demonstrating that he will be held accountable for such conduct.
|
|
If Michael Cohen Isn't Singing for the Feds Yet, He's a Fool |
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
|
|
Saturday, 16 June 2018 08:36 |
|
Pierce writes: "I'm not a lawyer. I just play one in this shebeen. But this sounds like bad news if you happen to be the subject of a multimillion-dollar federal investigation with no end in sight. From the NYT."
Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen. (photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
If Michael Cohen Isn't Singing for the Feds Yet, He's a Fool
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
16 June 18
Meanwhile, Sean Hannity prepares for one last attack on Robert Mueller's credibility.
 ’m not a lawyer. I just play one in this shebeen. But this sounds like bad news if you happen to be the subject of a multimillion-dollar federal investigation with no end in sight. From the NYT:
Mr. Cohen’s current legal team is expected to stay with him for the rest of the week as they struggle to complete a laborious review of a trove of documents and data files seized from him by the authorities two months ago. But after that review is finished, he will seek new legal counsel, the people familiar with his case said. The issue is primarily over payment of the legal bills of one of his lawyers, Stephen Ryan, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
What is the phrase that describes the moment when your former personal lawyer loses his own lawyers because of the legal fees involved in defending himself against charges based in what he may have done for you? I seem to recall that it begins with “dead” and ends with “meat.”
If Cohen hasn’t begun to sing for the Feds at this point, he’s a fool. If he’s stonewalling because he’s confident of a pardon at some point down the line, he’s a colossal fool, especially since the president* has made quite clear that Cohen is out there treading water in the deep blue alone. There is now a sense of growing momentum in the coverage of the Mueller investigation.
For the first time in a long while, I watched a big chunk of Sean Hannity’s nightly infomercial for the current administration* Tuesday. Sean is still in Singapore, and he’s staying until Friday because he doesn’t want to be in transit when the Justice Department releases the Inspector General’s report regarding the FBI’s handling of—and I can hardly believe I’m typing this again—the investigation into Hillary Rodham Clinton and her emails.
This report is widely expected to take a chunk out of the hides of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch. (Expect the word “tarmac” to appear several dozen times.) It also represents the last big opportunity for Sean and the rest of the president*’s Operating Thetans to delegitimize the eventual findings of Mueller’s investigation into the vast and fundamental corruption at the heart of their cult. So expect to get hit with a massive cloud of squid ink from the official state media at the end of this week, and through the entire weekend.
And, through it all, Robert Mueller will reach across his desk and pick up another file folder.
|
|
onald J. Trump is a Russian agent. What else can any sane and objective person conclude after his blindly pro-Russian — and anti-American — comment that Russia should be invited back into the G-7?
