Wednesday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 2

Eighth Person in Trump, Jr., Meeting Linked to Money Laundering

For years Donald Trump, Sr., has skirted the edge of the law and cut deals with both domestic and Russian mobsters, often in connection with his real estate projects.  The latter have for years provided a means for dirty Russian money to be used to acquire real estate in America - the USA, unlike many other nations has few restrictions on foreigners buying property - which when sold effective launders the money and makes it "clean."  Hence it should be no surprise that the now identified 8th person in the June, 2016, meeting with Trump, Jr., at Trump Tower had ties to money laundering. Literally, with every passing day some new sleazy and/or questionable detail of the meeting unfolds which further underscores the lies that were first used to explain the meeting which sought to collude with Russian operatives.  Here are details from Politico on this new information (Note Senator Mark Warner's pointed comment): 

The eighth attendee at a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between top Trump associates and a politically connected Russian lawyer is a business associate of a top Moscow oligarch and was once the focus of a congressional money-laundering probe.

Irakly "Ike" Kaveladze, until now the mysterious eighth person in the room, attended the meeting on behalf of Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate magnate with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and a Trump family friend. A lawyer for Agalarov has confirmed Kaveladze’s attendance to other news outlets, though he did not respond to requests for comment from POLITICO.

Business filings list Kaveladze as founder of a company called IBC Group, which shares a New Jersey address — 333 Sylvan Ave. in Englewood Cliffs — with several shell companies connected to Aras Agalarov.

One of those firms is Saffron Property Management, which Agalarov reportedly used to purchase an $11 million condo in Florida last year.

A POLITICO reporter visiting the nondescript office building where all of these companies are based found that the suite linked to Agalarov and Kaveladze was empty, with unopened mail by the door. A sign in the lobby indicated that the suite belonged to IBC and Russian Art Mall, which was founded in 2000 and registered to Emin Agalarov, who is a partner in his father's business.

"They're current on the rent. They're on our rent roll, they're just quiet," said George Sayrafe, who said he has managed the building for 20 years. "I hadn't heard anything. Some tenants bother you, you know what I mean? These people, I haven't seen them in a long time."

Kaveladze’s identity is among many facts about the 2016 meeting that Donald Trump Jr. has failed to disclose in multiple public statements. And his background may add to the questions members of Congress and investigators have about the meeting, which Trump officials say was brief and inconsequential but which Democrats call evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“I doubt if this individual who had a history of setting up thousands of fake accounts in Delaware was really there to talk about Russian adoptions,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, told reporters on Tuesday.

Kaveladze was named in a round of news stories in November 2000, after the General Accounting Office issued a report on Russian money laundering through U.S. financial institutions.

At the time, Kaveladze was identified in contemporaneous news reports as the originator of thousands of Delaware-based shell corporations.

Through his company, which was at the time called International Business Creations, Kaveladze formed 2,000 corporations for Russian brokers, which helped steer more than $1.4 billion in wire transactions through U.S. banks, according to the congressional inquiry.

The Agalarovs and Kaveladze are represented by Scott Balber, a New York white-collar defense attorney and former legal partner with Abbe Lowell, an attorney handling Russia matters for Kushner. Balber told The Washington Post on Tuesday he got a call this weekend from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office seeking an interview with Kaveladze — an ask that marks the first public signal the special counsel is investigating the Russia meeting.

Hundreds of German Choir Boys Abused Over Six Decades

As the Roman Catholic Church remains outwardly hostile towards LGBT individuals and continues to let go of its 12th century understanding of human sexuality (and the writings of church fathers who seemingly had some mental health issues), a new report out of Germany reminds us that the Church's unnatural and bizarre approach to human sexuality inflicts a cost on many, especially children and youths.  Sadly, the Church's celibacy requirement for its all male priesthood makes that priesthood a safe haven for the psycho-sexually dysfunctional and abnormal particularly when the near obsession with all things sexual is combined into the mix.  Sex abuse cases continue to unfold in America, all hell is breaking lose in Australia where the number three man at the Vatican has been charged with sex crimes, including rape, and similar stories are unfolding in Guam, India and various parts of Africa.  The problem is systemic yet no high cleric who was involved in aiding and abetting or covering up for such sex crimes has been punished.  Pope Francis' commission to address this has done nothing. As an institution, the Church is morally bankrupt.   Here are highlights from the BBC on the latest bombshell:

At least 547 young members of the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir in Germany were subjected to physical and in some instances sexual abuse over a period of 60 years, a new report says.

The report accuses 49 members of the Catholic Church of carrying out the abuse between 1945 and the early 1990s.

The alleged perpetrators are unlikely to face criminal charges because of the amount of time that has elapsed.

Victims said the experience was like "a prison, hell and a concentration camp".

The alleged physical abuse relates to children attending both the Regensburger Domspatzen's pre-school and high school, according to the lawyer tasked with investigating the abuse, Ulrich Weber.

Among those singled out for criticism in the report was former choirmaster Georg Ratzinger, elder brother of retired Pope Benedict XVI.

Mr Weber said that while Mr Ratzinger, now 93, had no knowledge of sexual abuse, "one can accuse him of looking the other way and failing to intervene".

Presenting his findings on Tuesday, Mr Weber said the investigation had found 500 cases of physical abuse and 67 instances of sexual abuse over six decades.

However, he said he was unable to contact or speak directly to a number of former students and said he estimated the true number of victims to be as high as 700.

Of the 49 church members who carried out the abuse under what was described as a "culture of silence", nine were found to have been involved in sexual abuse, Mr Weber added.

He said the alleged perpetrators had been identified but were not expected to face criminal charges because the alleged crimes took place too long ago to be legally valid.

He said the victims described their experiences at the boarding schools in southern Germany as "the worst time of their lives, characterised by fear, violence and hopelessness".

The 1,000-year-old choir was initially rocked by allegations of widespread sexual abuse in 2010.  A 2016 report into the allegations found that 231 children had been abused.

Mr Weber also criticised Regensburg Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, who is now a cardinal, for the weaknesses of the initial review of the scandal when it first came to light in 2010. The cardinal has rejected his findings.

The UN has accused the Vatican of "systematically" adopting policies allowing priests to sexually abuse thousands of children.

I ask again: how can  a morally decent person remain a member in this church and, worse yet, continue to support it financially? 

Dallas Morning News Column Trashes Trump's "Achievements"

The former Washington Bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News - one of the largest newspapers in Texas - has a scathing column in that newspaper that is scathing in its treatment of  Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, as he nears the six month mark in his toxic presidency.   The column is a handy compilation of some of the worse results of the Trump presidency, all of which ought to disturb patriotic Americans and those who do not embrace the Republican Party's slashing of the social safety net and reverse Robin Hood agenda in general.  Here are highlights from the column:

President Donald Trump's first six months have been defined by his often angry and tasteless tweets, his ham-handed efforts to denigrate and undercut the multiple investigations into Russian influence in the 2016 election and the stalemated legislative battle to repeal and replace Obamacare.

But Trump is right in saying he has significantly influenced government and the nation's image -- though much of his impact has been negative.

Here are some other Trump "achievements:"

FOREIGN POLICY

-Embraced autocrats in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Egypt and abandoned longtime U.S leadership in seeking to enhance democracy and human rights.

-Insulted U.S. allies in Europe, especially Germany, and undercut longstanding U.S. treaty commitments.

-Compromised Israel's intelligence sources.

-Spurred more divisiveness in an already divided Middle East by setting off a squabble between Saudi Arabia, a major U.S. ally, and Qatar, home of the region's biggest U.S.  military base.

-Undermined U.S. global leadership on climate change by withdrawing from the Paris agreement, joining only Syria and Nicaragua as nonparticipants.

-Reversed decades of Republican support for free trade, ceding leadership in Asia to China by withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and elsewhere by encouraging the British exit from the European Community.

DOMESTIC POLICY

-Proposed a budget with massive cuts that would shred the social safety net and cripple longstanding governmental functions.

-Created uncertainty in the nation's health care system by sending inconsistent administrative signals and supporting legislation that could deprive millions of people health insurance coverage, undermine Medicaid health support for lower income Americans and give wealthy taxpayers a massive tax cut.

-Mismanaged the federal government by failing to fill many top spots and installing an inexperienced, dysfunctional White House staff.

-Expanded the policy of deporting dangerous illegal aliens by including many people with minimal records, stable jobs and American families.

-Created a commission to investigate his unproven allegations of voter fraud because he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

-Reversed decades of bipartisan cooperation in extending environmental preservation of national landmarks.

-Hired foxes to watch the chicken coops by filling his administration with archconservatives, many with records opposing the very agencies in which they work, and curbing civil rights and environmental enforcement.

INSTITUTIONAL DAMAGE:

-Committed potentially impeachable offenses of obstructing justice that prompted appointment of a Special Counsel by firing FBI Director James Comey, because of his probe into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia, and urging other intelligence officials to pressure Comey to halt the probe.

-Undermined the courts with denunciations of judges and their decisions affecting his administration's policies, especially those curbing his hastily issued ban on Muslim travel from certain countries.

-Without evidence, accused former President Barack Obama of illegally wiretapping his phones.

-Repeatedly misrepresented his administration's policies and trashed officials with whom he has disagreements, calling the  ousted Comey "a nut job," Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer the "head clown" and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi an "incompetent."

-Intensified racial and other divisions by reducing governmental civil rights guarantees and reversing protections for sexual and racial minorities.

-Violated his own self-proclaimed ethics laws by allowing officials to deal with issues affecting their former employers. Permitted multiple instances in which he and other family members benefit financially from his presidency.

-Waged a vendetta against news outlets subjecting his administration to scrutiny, calling the mainstream media the "enemy of the American people" and denouncing unfavorable stories as "fake news." Undercut White House press institutions intended to facilitate dialogue between the presidency and the public.

Trump has failed so far to enact promised measures to increase economic growth, resulting in reduced long-term forecasts. Many economic numbers he touts exaggerate his impact and denigrate the carryover effect of positive Obama policies. Military progress against ISIS has not eased its terrorist threat.

The result: the least support for any new modern president, an exacerbation of domestic divisions, and unprecedented global disdain and embarrassment.

If you add up all these negatives, Trump has done a great deal in six months and none of it has been positive.  

The Collapse of Trumpcare and the GOP's Inability to Govern

Like it or not, the Republican Party has become a sectarian, racist and ideologically driven political party.   The result is that ideology and bigotry trump all else and the practical realities of governing are either ignored or behind the comprehension of the zealots who now comprise the party base and to whom GOP elected officials have prostituted themselves. Trumpcare is a perfect example.  The real goal is massive tax cuts for the wealthy and the supposed removal of government from the healthcare industry, the later, of course, being utterly impossible, especially when one considers how poorly the private sector market function before the passage of the Affordable Health Care Act.  Add to this the public's massive opposition to the Republican "repeal and replace" bills to date and Trumpcare's collapse yesterday should have been foreseen by anyone not drinking the Republican Kool-Aid (thankfully 4 Republican senators seemingly refused to drink when the Kool-Aid was passed to them).   A piece in New York Magazine looks at the GOP's inability to govern when ideology is forced to meet reality.  Here are article highlights:

In 2009, David Frum, the former Bush administration speechwriter whose ideological apostasy was in its formative stages, met with conservative intellectuals to discuss the policy response to the great recession. Faced with evidence that only massive government action — a financial rescue coupled with fiscal stimulus — could have prevented a complete economic meltdown, one conservative made a startling confession: “Maybe it was a good thing we weren’t in power then — because our principles don’t allow us to respond to a crisis like this.”

The financial crisis is hardly the only issue for which conservative principles turn out to be incompatible with the practical demands of governance. (Climate change leaps to mind.) The collapse of the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare is an especially vivid demonstration of the broader problem. The cohesion Republicans possessed in opposition disintegrated once they had power, because their ideology left them unable to pass legislation that was not cruel, horrific, and repugnant to their own constituents.

Donald Trump promised during the campaign that he would quickly and easily replace Obamacare with an alternative everybody would love.

One might dismiss this kind of rhetoric as a typical Trumpian boast. But the candidate was merely translating into the vernacular the somewhat more carefully hedged promises his party had made for years into terms in which they were meant to be understood. Paul Ryan’s “A Better Way” road map offered what it called “a step-by-step plan to give every American access to quality, affordable health care. … more choices and lower costs.”

In truth, it was never possible to reconcile public standards for a humane health-care system with conservative ideology. In a pure market system, access to medical care will be unaffordable for a huge share of the public. Giving them access to quality care means mobilizing government power to redistribute resources, either through direct tax and transfers or through regulations that raise costs for the healthy and lower them for the sick. Obamacare uses both methods, and both are utterly repugnant and unacceptable to movement conservatives. That commitment to abstract anti-government dogma, without any concern for the practical impact, is the quality that makes the Republican Party unlike right-of-center governing parties in any other democracy. In no other country would a conservative party develop a plan for health care that every major industry stakeholder calls completely unworkable.

The Trump administration might lash out at Obamacare by continuing to sabotage its functioning markets. They will find, however, that sabotaging the insurance exchanges will create millions of victims right away, as opposed to the luxury of delaying the pain until after the elections. The power to destroy remains within the Republican Party’s capacity. The power to translate its ideological principles into practical government is utterly beyond its reach.

The first step in the GOP's move to insanity was when the Christofascists hijacked the party base.  Now, the entire party has been subsumed to ignoring objective reality just as the Christofascists reject anything or anyone that challenges their myth and legend based world view.  Myths and legends may be fine and good in literature or in the bubble of a fundamentalist congregation, but objective facts and science quickly undercut the unsupportable fantasy world that they comprise.  So too with the GOP's unworkable ideology. 

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Joe Scarborough: An Argument for Leaving the GOP

The Republican Party has, in my view, become something hideous.  It has intertwined itself with white supremacists and religious extremists.  It now turns a blind eye towards the interference in our elections by a hostile foreign government.  Its fiscal policies are ever increasing military spending even as Der Trumpenführer disengages America from its leadership role in the world, and a savaging of the majority of Americans so as to benefit the very wealthy with  lavish tax cuts.  Poor children and the impoverished elderly are simply something to be cast aside.  Ditto for working Americans faced with the prospect of  the loss of health insurance. I left the Republican Party when much of this cancer in the GOP was in its early stages.  Many chose instead to close their eyes to reality and support a party that was more heinous by the day.    Former congressman and TV personality Joe Scarborough was one such individual.  Now, with the cancer in the GOP metastatic, he too has left the GOP and explains why in this piece.  Here are highlights: 

I did not leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left its senses. The political movement that once stood athwart history resisting bloated government and military adventurism has been reduced to an amalgam of talk-radio resentments. President Trump’s Republicans have devolved into a party without a cause, dominated by a leader hopelessly ill-informed about the basics of conservatism, U.S. history and the Constitution.

America’s first Republican president reportedly said , “Nearly all men can stand adversity. But if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” The current Republican president and the party he controls were granted monopoly power over Washington in November and already find themselves spectacularly failing Abraham Lincoln’s character exam.  . . . . the Republican leaders who have subjugated themselves to the White House’s corrupting influence fell short of Lincoln’s standard long before their favorite reality-TV star brought his gaudy circus act to Washington.
 When I left Congress in 2001, I praised my party’s successful efforts to balance the budget for the first time in a generation and keep many of the promises that led to our takeover in 1994. I concluded my last speech on the House floor by foolishly predicting that Republicans would balance budgets and champion a restrained foreign policy for as long as they held power.
 I would be proved wrong immediately.

As the new century began, Republicans gained control of the federal government. George W. Bush and the GOP Congress responded by turning a $155 billion surplus into a $1 trillion deficit and doubling the national debt, passing a $7 trillion unfunded entitlement program and promoting a foreign policy so utopian it would have made Woodrow Wilson blush. Voters made Nancy Pelosi speaker of the House in 2006 and Barack Obama president in 2008.

After their well-deserved drubbing, Republicans swore that if voters ever entrusted them with running Washington again, they would prove themselves worthy. Trump’s party was given a second chance this year, but it has spent almost every day since then making the majority of Americans regret it.

The GOP president questioned America’s constitutional system of checks and balances. Republican leaders said nothing. He echoed Stalin and Mao by calling the free press “the enemy of the people.” Republican leaders were silent. And as the commander in chief insulted allies while embracing autocratic thugs, Republicans who spent a decade supporting wars of choice remained quiet. Meanwhile, their budget-busting proposals demonstrate a fiscal recklessness very much in line with the Bush years.

It is a dying party that I can no longer defend.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham has long predicted that the Republican and Democrats’ 150-year duopoly will end. The signs seem obvious enough. When my Republican Party took control of Congress in 1994, it was the first time the GOP had won the House in a generation. The two parties have been in a state of turmoil ever since. . . . . last fall, Trump demolished both the Republican and Democratic establishments.

Political historians will one day view Donald Trump as a historical anomaly. But the wreckage visited of this man will break the Republican Party into pieces — and lead to the election of independent thinkers no longer tethered to the tired dogmas of the polarized past.

The end cannot come soon enough in my view.  The question is one of how many will suffer and die before the end of the Trump/GOP reign of terror is over.   

House GOP Budget Bill Will Savage Medicare and Social Security

Republicans have already alienated younger voters with their reactionary social policies, including anti-LGBT policies demanded by the Christofascists who make up Der Trumpenführer remaining loyal base.   Now, with the House budget bill they seem about to alienate older Americans so as to benefit large financial institution and a wasteful Defense Department.  On the chopping block are Medicare and Social Security, often seen as the third rail in national politics, but targets of the GOP unrestrained reverse Robin Hood, despite the seeming collapse of the latest Trumpcare bill that lost two more Republican senators late yesterday due to the horrific impact the bill would have on millions of Americans.  And despite promises by  Der Trumpenführer that he would never countenance cuts to Medicare or Social Security.  Of course, we learned quickly that Trump's promises are worthless.   A piece in the Washington Post looks at the draconian House proposal that would accelerate the GOP's push to bring back the worse aspects of the Gilded Age.  Here are excerpts:

House Republicans unveiled a 2018 budget plan Tuesday that would pave the way for ambitious tax reform legislation — but only alongside a package of politically sensitive spending cuts that threaten to derail the tax rewrite before it begins.

The instructions in the draft budget, however, go well beyond tax policy and set the stage for a potential $203 billion rollback of financial industry regulations, federal employee benefits, welfare spending and more. 

Like the spending blueprint released this year by President Trump, the House plan envisions major cuts to federal spending over the coming decade, bringing the budget into balance by relying on accelerated economic growth to boost revenue. Under the House plan, defense spending would steadily increase over 10 years while nondefense discretionary spending would decline to $424 billion — 23 percent below the $554 billion the federal government is spending in that category this year.

Unlike Trump’s budget, the House proposal cuts into Medicare and Social Security — entitlement programs that the president has pledged to preserve. The House plan also makes a less-rosy economic growth assumption of 2.6 percent versus the 3 percent eyed by the Trump administration. Both, however, exceed the 1.9 percent figure eyed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in its most recent economic estimates.

 House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and the panel’s chairman, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), have said they intend to pursue a deficit-neutral reform bill, meaning the savings would have to be found in other programs under the committee’s jurisdiction — such as Medicare, disability aid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and unemployment compensation.

The Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has explored cuts to the federal workforce and to federal employee benefits, would be required to find $32 billion in deficit savings.

Members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus have been pushing for more aggressive long-term spending cuts in reconciliation. The group’s leader, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), told reporters last week that the numbers in the draft budget could not pass the House, calling the proposed $203 billion in mandatory spending cuts over the coming decade a relative pittance in a federal budget that already approaches $4 trillion in yearly spending.

Moderates, meanwhile, are staging a revolt of their own. Twenty members of the centrist Tuesday Group signed a letter last month objecting to even $200 billion in mandatory spending cuts, arguing they are “not practical” and would “make enacting tax reform even more difficult than it already will be.”

Average Americans need to (i) hope this bill fails, and (ii) wake up to the reality that to the GOP they are little more than disposable trash.  Senior citizens who have been duped by the GOP's calls to racism and religious based bigotry could pay a high price if this bill and any version of Trumpcare pass.  Meanwhile, those with aging parents best grapple with the reality that they may end up housing the sick and frail parents or have to bear the high cost of their care in nursing homes.  The GOP message to the elderly?  Do us a favor and die.  As for federal employees in Northern Virginia, I hope they punish the GOP by voting a straight Democratic ticket in Virginia's November elections. 

Down Playing Russia, the GOP's Most Dangerous Game

In some ways one of the most baffling things we are witnessing in the wake of the 2016 Presidential election and the Electoral College's election of Donald Trump in contempt for the popular vote is the Republican Party's continued efforts to down play and/or totally dismiss possible - or, in my view, likely - collusion of the Trump campaign with Russian intelligence and other Russian operatives to throw the election to Trump.  Now, even faced with emails released by Donald Trump, Jr., himself demonstrating an eagerness to collude with Russian and to accept help from the Russian government, the official GOP response is to strive to look the other way.  Of course all of this began back in September, 2016, when Mitch McConnell sought to silence the Obama administration efforts to expose the Russian hacking effort to harm the Clinton campaign.  A piece in Slate ponders how long this GOP effort can continue and at what cost the GOP may ultimately have to pay for deliberate acquiescence to campaign interference by a hostile foreign government.   Here are article excerpts:

Last September, in a classified briefing, the CIA told senior lawmakers that Russia was working to elect Donald Trump president. In that meeting, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed skepticism of the intelligence and questioned its veracity. And he made a threat of sorts. At the time, the Washington Post reported that McConnell “made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.” Put simply, if President Obama spoke out on Russian interference, McConnell would turn it into a partisan football. The president kept quiet. Of the turning points that brought us to our present crisis, this is among the most consequential. McConnell’s stance in that briefing didn’t just enable Russian hacking, it precluded official scrutiny and criticism of that hacking and effectively gave cover to key members of Team Trump as they sought information to use against Hillary Clinton. McConnell downplayed Russian interference for what were likely partisan reasons, with little knowledge of the scope of and even less fear for the far-ranging implications of what he was covering up. And in that, he presaged the response of the entire Republican Party, which didn’t just utilize the hacked and leaked information but has looked the other way at every sign of something untoward involving Donald Trump and the Russian government.

Republicans are still looking the other way, even as that stance becomes more and more untenable. And they are looking away—as well as downplaying the seriousness of the issue—despite the real chance that the truth is more damning than what we know at the present, and that it may damage our country more than we want to believe. This “see no evil” response is especially egregious given recent revelations around Donald Trump Jr. and his efforts to obtain favorable information for his father’s campaign. We now know Trump Jr. responded enthusiastically to what was communicated as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump” . . .

There is a response to this, increasingly popular among Trump’s defenders: Collusion isn’t illegal. But that’s almost beside the point. Democracy is only possible if there is confidence in the process, and foreign intervention—potentially solicited by one campaign—is deeply damaging to that confidence. It threatens the legitimacy of the entire enterprise. For our system of government, the question of Russian interference—and the extent of Trump’s awareness and involvement—is existential.

For our system of government, the question of Russian interference—and the extent of Trump’s awareness and involvement—is existential.   But that fact, and the steady stream of damning revelations, has not kept GOP lawmakers from giving Trump and his team the benefit of the doubt.

[W]hile other Republicans, like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, used harsher language when referring to Team Trump’s dalliances with Russia, there’s no indication that any Republicans have wavered in their overall support for the Trump administration. There have been no calls for an even deeper investigation, no sense from GOP lawmakers that this is an urgent affair. Republicans are playing a dangerous game: covering up a scandal, without knowing the full scope of the offense.

What if future revelations detail actual collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government? Though there is currently no proof, do Republicans really believe the chances are zero that this or even worse possibilities—are true? . . . . By allowing the collapse of trust, the Republican Party will have abetted a wholesale subversion of American democracy.

[T]he institutional indifference to foreign intervention is something different. It signals a dangerously zero-sum attitude, where any price—including subversion from outside forces—is worth paying if it clears a path to partisan and ideological victory. Perhaps the worm will turn and Republicans will join Democrats in demanding real answers from President Trump and his associates. For now, at least, we have a Republican Party that values its success above the integrity of our system.

California "Conversion Therapist" Sued For Consumer Fraud

Every legitimate mental health and medical association in America condemns the use of so-called "conversion therapy" which is claimed to change gays into heterosexuals.  In a single voice, these associations say such bogus therapy doesn't work, and can be very harmful and even induce suicide. A small but growing number of states have banned fraudulent ex-gay "conversion therapy" for minors.  Yet in most states,  quacks and religious "ministries" continue to peddle the ex-gay myth and prey on gays and their parents (who usually want their children to "change" to meet parental expectations and/or avoid parental embarrassment) and in the process rake in large sums of money for their worthless, witch doctor-like "therapy sessions."   Now, a therapist in California is being sued  for fraud under that state's consumer protection law much as JONAH - a conversion therapy ministry that victimized those of the Jewish faith - was sued in New Jersey and ultimately forced out of business.  Here are excerpts from a piece reporting on this new approach to stopping the fraudulent and unethical practice:

Katherine McCobb — who identifies as a lesbian and was told by her Berkeley-based therapist that she was unnatural and he could help “rewire her brain” with “conversion therapy” tactics and change her sexual orientation — has sued the marriage and family counselor for fraud under California’s consumer protection laws.

The American Psychological Association and other professional counseling organizations have widely discredited “conversion therapy” as ineffective, unethical, and dangerous.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights filed the complaint, the initial step before a lawsuit, in Alameda County Superior Court on Thursday against Lloyd Willey on behalf of McCobb, who said she spent more than $70,000 from 2006 to 2014 when she was his client.

“Therapists who exploit vulnerable people by taking their money based on false claims that being lesbian or gay is unnatural and that counseling can change a person’s sexual orientation are engaging in fraud,” Shannon Price Minter, legal director with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said in a press statement. “Charging a person money based on such bald-faced misrepresentations violates California’s consumer protection laws.” California has outlawed conversion therapy on minors. McCobb began paying Willey for therapy when she was 25 years old. McCobb didn’t start therapy for help coping with her sexual orientation, but Willey fixated on McCobb being a lesbian and pressured her to become heterosexual with various conversion therapy tactics, according to the complaint.

For example, Willey told McCobb that being a lesbian is unnatural, publicly shamed her during group therapy sessions and urged her to change her appearance to be more stereotypical feminine, including losing weight, growing her hair, changing her wardrobe, and wearing make-up, according to the complaint.

Willey also pressured McCobb to date a man who was also Willey’s client, according to the complaint.

Hopefully the lawsuit is successful and insurance carriers will cease insuring therapists who engage in such fraudulent practices.