User-Supported News Commentary Hosted by Craig Crawford
Springing Forward
Beginning Wednesday March 20 and it’s about time!
19 thoughts on “Springing Forward”
couldn’t wait. Already there are daffodils blooming, birds singing, bunnies hopping and anyway I’m just tired of this cold wet winter.
We’re going through a cool snap but we had temps in the 70s & even 80 last week. You are right Spring can’t come soon enough. In celebration of the coming yesterday I cut the Pampas Grass and butterfly bushes back to give them room to grow and bloom.
guess some on the trail are bemoaning spring as a bringer of floods, tornadoes and other things taxing the system… yeah, and taxingly filling out and filing those forms too.
pogo, how goes it with your turbo-tax tussle this year? any problem with it tackling and making sense of the new 1040?
Another sign of spring along the Chesapeake Bay is the return of the Osprey. This nest is about one hundred feet from my boat. The birds and little ones (when hatched) make a lot of noise.
George Conway, the husband of Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, once again sounded the alarm on President Donald Trump’s mental health — and tweeted out a possible diagnosis for a psychiatric disorder.
Conway began his Monday morning by warning fellow anti-Trump conservative Ana Navarro to not see Trump’s latest crazed tweets as part of a grand strategy to manipulate and distract — rather, Conway said, we should “consider them as a product of his pathologies, and they make perfect sense.”
The definition of NPD includes several other Trump personality traits, including “deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying” and “impassivity or failure to plan ahead,” as well as “lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.”
The U.S. Supreme Court gets a chance to join the fray over Special Counsel Robert Mueller for the first time this week as the justices consider whether to hear an appeal in a mystery case that’s kept people guessing for months.
The partially redacted appeal, filed by an unidentified foreign government-owned company in a fight over a grand jury subpoena, centers on U.S. courts’ power over businesses owned by foreign governments. It’s the first known effort to get the nation’s highest court to weigh in on Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling with the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice.
The dispute became a source of intrigue in part because a federal appeals court in Washington closed an entire floor of the courthouse to the public while the case was being argued on Dec. 7. The justices could say on March 25 whether they will take the case or reject it without a hearing.
Details about the dispute remain sketchy. The company has refused to comply with the July 2018 subpoena, and a judge has imposed sanctions that now total more than $2 million and continue to grow by $50,000 a day. What the subpoena is seeking and how it fits into Mueller’s investigation are matters of speculation. The case has been so secret that Mueller’s name didn’t appear publicly in a Supreme Court document until this month.
The unidentified company has an American office where the subpoena was served, and prosecutors contend the company conducts “considerable business” in the U.S., according to an appeals court opinion.
The legal issues are clearer. The company is asking the Supreme Court to rule that the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act protects foreign governments and entities they own from being dragged into U.S. criminal cases.
In ruling against the company on a 3-0 vote, the federal appeals court in Washington said the 1976 law, while shielding foreign governments in some contexts, gives American courts authority over them when they are involved in U.S. commercial activity. The court said that power covers civil and criminal cases.
The panel said the company’s argument that it can’t be brought into court would mean that “a foreign-sovereign-owned, purely commercial enterprise operating within the United States could flagrantly violate criminal laws and the U.S. government would be powerless to respond save through diplomatic pressure.”
Mueller doesn’t have authority to file briefs at the Supreme Court, but U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco is weighing in on the special counsel’s behalf. Francisco is urging the court to reject the appeal, saying no court has ever granted the sweeping sovereign immunity being sought by the company.
[…]
The case is In Re Grand Jury Subpoena, 18-948.
here’s another sign of spring… male strutting… he and his harem greeted us this morning…
Patd, I started the TurboTax war yesterday. Won’t know about the intricacies of it until I get through the last 10% of entries and see what the error check says. We did have a couple of issues related to new treatment of refis and helix’s, but otherwise the proof is in the error checking process.
After the Noah worthy rains, it is spring here but more rain coming booooo
Yes, Spring brings rain and storms and generally erratic weather patterns. Nothing new about that. Don’t like storms, but it comes with the weather.
Spring, here, is winging its way forward as evidenced by the helicopter seeds poised for takeoff from the maple tree directly opposite my window. B.B. I watched 60-Minutes yesterday evening. They had a segment on Monaco and their harbor crammed to overflowing with rich-peoples ocean going vessels passing as yachts. Totally sick–you’re on the right track.
NYTimes: A Mar-a-Lago Weekend and an Act of God: Trump’s History With Deutsche Bank
As President Trump delivered his inaugural address in 2017, a slight woman with feathered gray hair sat listening, bundled in a hooded white parka in a fenced-off V.I.P. section. Her name was Rosemary T. Vrablic. She was a managing director at Deutsche Bank and one of the reasons Mr. Trump had just taken the oath of office.
It was a moment of celebration — and a moment of worry for Ms. Vrablic’s employer.
Mr. Trump and Deutsche Bank were deeply entwined, their symbiotic bond born of necessity and ambition on both sides: a real estate mogul made toxic by polarizing rhetoric and a pattern of defaults, and a bank with intractable financial problems and a history of misconduct.
The relationship had paid off. Mr. Trump used loans from Deutsche Bank to finance skyscrapers and other high-end properties, and repeatedly cited his relationship with the bank to deflect political attacks on his business acumen. Deutsche Bank used Mr. Trump’s projects to build its investment-banking business, reaped fees from the assets he put in its custody and leveraged his celebrity to lure clients.
Then Mr. Trump won the 2016 election, and the German bank shifted into damage-control mode, bracing for an onslaught of public scrutiny, according to several people involved in the internal response.
In the weeks before Ms. Vrablic attended his swearing-in, the bank commissioned reports to figure out how it had gotten in so deep with Mr. Trump. It issued an unusual edict to its Wall Street employees: Do not publicly utter the word “Trump.”
More than two years later, Mr. Trump’s financial ties with Deutsche Bank are the subject of investigations by two congressional committees and the New York attorney general. Investigators hope to use Deutsche Bank as a window into Mr. Trump’s personal and business finances.
Deutsche Bank officials have quietly argued to regulators, lawmakers and journalists that Mr. Trump was not a priority for the bank or its senior leaders and that the lending was the work of a single, obscure division. But interviews with more than 20 current and former Deutsche Bank executives and board members, most of them with direct knowledge of the Trump relationship, contradict the bank’s narrative.
Over nearly two decades, Deutsche Bank’s leaders repeatedly saw red flags surrounding Mr. Trump. There was a disastrous bond sale, a promised loan that relied on a banker’s forged signature, wild exaggerations of Mr. Trump’s wealth, even a claim of an act of God.
But Deutsche Bank had a ravenous appetite for risk and limited concern about its clients’ reputations. Time after time, with the support of two different chief executives, the bank handed money — a total of well over $2 billion — to a man whom nearly all other banks had deemed untouchable.
[continues]
the above NYtimes article is fascinating but long and appears to be only chapter one in a saga of import.
for example this seems to be a teaser of things yet to come and mysteries revealed in future chapters:
In the late 1990s, Deutsche Bank, which is based in Germany, was trying to make a name for itself on Wall Street. Its investment-banking division went on a hiring binge.
The bank recruited a handful of Goldman Sachs traders to lead a push into commercial real estate. One was Justin Kennedy, the son of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Another was Mike Offit, whose father was the writer Sidney Offit.
WARNING. thread threat alert:
unless some kind trail mixer comes up with a thread, the trail will be littered with more inane posting by this commentator!
our substitute leader jace is temporarily under the weather and so it appears, if someone does not belly up to this low bar with a thread contribution, you are stuck with me.
The public on Tuesday will see the search warrant and other documents related to last year’s FBI raids on the home and office of Michael Cohen.
What we might learn: The origin of the investigation, the timeline of events, what investigators were looking for in their search and other details into the case of President Donald Trump’s former attorney and fixer.
U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III on Monday ordered redacted versions of the documents to be released after nine news organizations, including ABC and CBS News, The Associated Press, CNN and The Wall Street Journal, sought to unseal them citing high public interest and a right to access.
In a Monday statement, Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis said the release of the documents furthers Cohen’s interest in “continuing to cooperate and providing information and the truth about Donald Trump and the Trump organization to law enforcement and Congress.”
Patd, move your 6:49 post to the next thread an mention that Preet Bharara doesn’t believe Mueller is wrapping up based on the Gates delayed sentencing news, et voila, thread starter. ??♂️
couldn’t wait. Already there are daffodils blooming, birds singing, bunnies hopping and anyway I’m just tired of this cold wet winter.
We’re going through a cool snap but we had temps in the 70s & even 80 last week. You are right Spring can’t come soon enough. In celebration of the coming yesterday I cut the Pampas Grass and butterfly bushes back to give them room to grow and bloom.
guess some on the trail are bemoaning spring as a bringer of floods, tornadoes and other things taxing the system… yeah, and taxingly filling out and filing those forms too.
pogo, how goes it with your turbo-tax tussle this year? any problem with it tackling and making sense of the new 1040?
Another sign of spring along the Chesapeake Bay is the return of the Osprey. This nest is about one hundred feet from my boat. The birds and little ones (when hatched) make a lot of noise.
and yet another sign of spring — madness
from raw story:
George Conway, the husband of Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, once again sounded the alarm on President Donald Trump’s mental health — and tweeted out a possible diagnosis for a psychiatric disorder.
Conway began his Monday morning by warning fellow anti-Trump conservative Ana Navarro to not see Trump’s latest crazed tweets as part of a grand strategy to manipulate and distract — rather, Conway said, we should “consider them as a product of his pathologies, and they make perfect sense.”
To give his followers an idea of what he was talking about, Conway then tweeted out information about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is defined by individuals who exhibit “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), a constant need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.”
The definition of NPD includes several other Trump personality traits, including “deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying” and “impassivity or failure to plan ahead,” as well as “lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.”
.
Bloomberg:
The U.S. Supreme Court gets a chance to join the fray over Special Counsel Robert Mueller for the first time this week as the justices consider whether to hear an appeal in a mystery case that’s kept people guessing for months.
The partially redacted appeal, filed by an unidentified foreign government-owned company in a fight over a grand jury subpoena, centers on U.S. courts’ power over businesses owned by foreign governments. It’s the first known effort to get the nation’s highest court to weigh in on Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling with the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice.
The dispute became a source of intrigue in part because a federal appeals court in Washington closed an entire floor of the courthouse to the public while the case was being argued on Dec. 7. The justices could say on March 25 whether they will take the case or reject it without a hearing.
Details about the dispute remain sketchy. The company has refused to comply with the July 2018 subpoena, and a judge has imposed sanctions that now total more than $2 million and continue to grow by $50,000 a day. What the subpoena is seeking and how it fits into Mueller’s investigation are matters of speculation. The case has been so secret that Mueller’s name didn’t appear publicly in a Supreme Court document until this month.
The unidentified company has an American office where the subpoena was served, and prosecutors contend the company conducts “considerable business” in the U.S., according to an appeals court opinion.
The legal issues are clearer. The company is asking the Supreme Court to rule that the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act protects foreign governments and entities they own from being dragged into U.S. criminal cases.
In ruling against the company on a 3-0 vote, the federal appeals court in Washington said the 1976 law, while shielding foreign governments in some contexts, gives American courts authority over them when they are involved in U.S. commercial activity. The court said that power covers civil and criminal cases.
The panel said the company’s argument that it can’t be brought into court would mean that “a foreign-sovereign-owned, purely commercial enterprise operating within the United States could flagrantly violate criminal laws and the U.S. government would be powerless to respond save through diplomatic pressure.”
Mueller doesn’t have authority to file briefs at the Supreme Court, but U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco is weighing in on the special counsel’s behalf. Francisco is urging the court to reject the appeal, saying no court has ever granted the sweeping sovereign immunity being sought by the company.
[…]
The case is In Re Grand Jury Subpoena, 18-948.
here’s another sign of spring… male strutting… he and his harem greeted us this morning…
Patd, I started the TurboTax war yesterday. Won’t know about the intricacies of it until I get through the last 10% of entries and see what the error check says. We did have a couple of issues related to new treatment of refis and helix’s, but otherwise the proof is in the error checking process.
After the Noah worthy rains, it is spring here but more rain coming booooo
Yes, Spring brings rain and storms and generally erratic weather patterns. Nothing new about that. Don’t like storms, but it comes with the weather.
Spring, here, is winging its way forward as evidenced by the helicopter seeds poised for takeoff from the maple tree directly opposite my window. B.B. I watched 60-Minutes yesterday evening. They had a segment on Monaco and their harbor crammed to overflowing with rich-peoples ocean going vessels passing as yachts. Totally sick–you’re on the right track.
NYTimes: A Mar-a-Lago Weekend and an Act of God: Trump’s History With Deutsche Bank
As President Trump delivered his inaugural address in 2017, a slight woman with feathered gray hair sat listening, bundled in a hooded white parka in a fenced-off V.I.P. section. Her name was Rosemary T. Vrablic. She was a managing director at Deutsche Bank and one of the reasons Mr. Trump had just taken the oath of office.
It was a moment of celebration — and a moment of worry for Ms. Vrablic’s employer.
Mr. Trump and Deutsche Bank were deeply entwined, their symbiotic bond born of necessity and ambition on both sides: a real estate mogul made toxic by polarizing rhetoric and a pattern of defaults, and a bank with intractable financial problems and a history of misconduct.
The relationship had paid off. Mr. Trump used loans from Deutsche Bank to finance skyscrapers and other high-end properties, and repeatedly cited his relationship with the bank to deflect political attacks on his business acumen. Deutsche Bank used Mr. Trump’s projects to build its investment-banking business, reaped fees from the assets he put in its custody and leveraged his celebrity to lure clients.
Then Mr. Trump won the 2016 election, and the German bank shifted into damage-control mode, bracing for an onslaught of public scrutiny, according to several people involved in the internal response.
In the weeks before Ms. Vrablic attended his swearing-in, the bank commissioned reports to figure out how it had gotten in so deep with Mr. Trump. It issued an unusual edict to its Wall Street employees: Do not publicly utter the word “Trump.”
More than two years later, Mr. Trump’s financial ties with Deutsche Bank are the subject of investigations by two congressional committees and the New York attorney general. Investigators hope to use Deutsche Bank as a window into Mr. Trump’s personal and business finances.
Deutsche Bank officials have quietly argued to regulators, lawmakers and journalists that Mr. Trump was not a priority for the bank or its senior leaders and that the lending was the work of a single, obscure division. But interviews with more than 20 current and former Deutsche Bank executives and board members, most of them with direct knowledge of the Trump relationship, contradict the bank’s narrative.
Over nearly two decades, Deutsche Bank’s leaders repeatedly saw red flags surrounding Mr. Trump. There was a disastrous bond sale, a promised loan that relied on a banker’s forged signature, wild exaggerations of Mr. Trump’s wealth, even a claim of an act of God.
But Deutsche Bank had a ravenous appetite for risk and limited concern about its clients’ reputations. Time after time, with the support of two different chief executives, the bank handed money — a total of well over $2 billion — to a man whom nearly all other banks had deemed untouchable.
[continues]
the above NYtimes article is fascinating but long and appears to be only chapter one in a saga of import.
for example this seems to be a teaser of things yet to come and mysteries revealed in future chapters:
In the late 1990s, Deutsche Bank, which is based in Germany, was trying to make a name for itself on Wall Street. Its investment-banking division went on a hiring binge.
The bank recruited a handful of Goldman Sachs traders to lead a push into commercial real estate. One was Justin Kennedy, the son of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Another was Mike Offit, whose father was the writer Sidney Offit.
WARNING. thread threat alert:
unless some kind trail mixer comes up with a thread, the trail will be littered with more inane posting by this commentator!
our substitute leader jace is temporarily under the weather and so it appears, if someone does not belly up to this low bar with a thread contribution, you are stuck with me.
bwahahahah!
usatoday:
Judge orders public release of redacted documents on FBI’s raid of Michael Cohen
Patd, move your 6:49 post to the next thread an mention that Preet Bharara doesn’t believe Mueller is wrapping up based on the Gates delayed sentencing news, et voila, thread starter. ??♂️
pogo, your wish is my command. coming up at 8:27
new thread
poor Jace
I’m very much enjoying the Conway family feud