The death of John McCain has resulted in the usual gushing tributes that are given to almost any long-serving American politician. I never bought into his self-promoted image of being a principled maverick, bucking party orthodoxy and forging his own path. McCain was in reality a faithful follower of the party line, voting with it on almost every issue and in addition being one of the worst warmongera. I wrote about what McCain was really like back in 2008. To his credit, he did discourage the crude race baiting of the Republican voters when in the 2008 election campaign they recklessly brought up the Marxist-Kenyan-Muslim tropes about Barack Obama, the kind of thing that has now become routine in the Republican party. It is because Donald Trump is so extremely awful that ordinary awful Republicans like McCain look better in comparison.
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Just weeks after an attack that killed 40 children, the Saudi-US-UAE coalition forces have killed another 26 children and four women in two attacks.

A senior UN official has condemned another deadly Saudi-led coalition air strike in Yemen, which has killed at least 22 children and four women.

The victims were fleeing fighting in the al-Durayhimi district, south of the port city of Hudaydah, when their vehicle was hit on Thursday.

A separate air strike the same day killed four children, according to the UN’s humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock.
…

Mr Lowcock’s statement on Friday confirmed that the victims had been fleeing violence around the rebel-held port city Hudaydah.

He renewed calls for an impartial and independent investigation into air strikes. A report by Human Rights Watch the same day accused the Saudi-led coalition of failing to hold “credible” investigations into such incidents.

The reported attack was condemned by Unicef, Save the Children and other international organisations.

… check out what is happening in Australia which now has its fifth prime minister in five years, most of the changes coming not from general elections but from intra-party leadership struggles within both major parties. The most recent one yesterday resulted in prime minister Malcolm Turnbull being replaced by Scott Morrison as leader of the governing Liberal party. The Liberals have a slim one-seat majority in parliament and is thus already in a precarious position.
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[UPDATE: Today it is reported that Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump organization, has also been given immunity by the Mueller investigation in return for testimony.

Mr Weisselberg reportedly oversaw the reimbursements Mr Cohen received from the Trump Organization for paying adult film star Stormy Daniels. Depending on how the financial transfer was accounted for, it could run afoul of a number of campaign finance and accounting laws.

What’s more, Mr Weisselberg has been at the beating heart of the Trump Organization since the 1970s. He handles the president’s private trust, is the treasurer of the family’s charitable foundation – currently under investigation by the state of New York – and has, at times, reviewed the Trump presidential campaign’s accounting books.

He’s the man who knows things – and now he’s talking.

Is there going to be anyone close to Trump who is not convicted of a crime or given plea deals and immunity in return for testimony?]

Many people have been involved in the Byzantine world of corruption and sleaze that surrounds this administration like a thick fog. Donald Trump is finding out that he has very few true and loyal friends. This should not surprise him since he himself seems to have no sense of loyalty to anyone but realizing that requires a sense of self-awareness that he clearly does not possess. We are now seeing the classic situation of thieves falling out, when they turn on each other to save their own skins. The latest people to do this are of course Omarosa Manigault Newman and Michael Cohen.
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I started hearing about political commentator Paris Dennard at the time Donald Trump became a candidate for the presidency. Dennard was a vociferous supporter of Trump and appeared frequently on NPR as his spokesperson. He was quite obnoxious, one of those people who aggressively counter-attacks when anything negative is said about his hero rather than use thoughtful arguments. Hence he is ideal for the conflict-based talk shows that cable news thrives on, though I was annoyed with NPR for giving him so much airtime.
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Mohammed Bin Salman, the person who has emerged as a powerful figure in Saudi Arabia and even as the de facto ruler, has managed to get a lot of favorable press in the west by allowing women to drive, and the media have fawned over him as a reformer, suggesting that his friendship with Jared Kushner is a sign that he has modern values and that he is leading the country away from its ghastly and barbaric practices. But today comes word that the government is seeking the death penalty for a woman activist merely for participating in protests.
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This afternoon saw two major developments in cases brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, though the two cases are separate. In the case in Alexandria, Virginia against Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s one-time campaign manager, the jury brought in guilty verdicts on eight counts but could not agree on the other ten. Manafort is due to face another trial in Washington DC next month.
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Take a look at this short video sent out by him on his Twitter account.

Austerity doesn’t work. pic.twitter.com/LvKSMvHetI

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) August 17, 2018

I don’t know if Corbyn was also behind the creation of the video or just tweeted it out.

The only quibble I have with it is that it seems to depict the austerity advocates as well-intentioned but misguided. In reality I think they know exactly what they are doing and that is to shift wealth away from the lower income groups to the rich. All the ‘concern’ about the deficit and growth is just window dressing.

The video, with a few tweaks, would apply well to the US too.