It’s the Coverup That Gets You: The murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has ripped the cover off the veneer of political and social reform glued on the face of the Kingdom by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Trump administration is buying a laughably lame explanation in an effort to salvage an alliance with Saudi Arabia the US could live without.

The smiling bin Salman has been credited as a forward-thinking man for allowing Saudi women to drive a car, but he’s also the guy who sentenced a critical blogger to 1,000 lashes, imprisoned his cousins to strip them of political influence, kidnapped Lebanon’s prime minister, and started an unending war in Yemen.

Now he wants the world to believe that a journalist got into a fatally losing fist fight with 15 Saudi security agents and nobody knows were the body is.

A NY Times editorial says, “Among the many problems with this story is that nobody will seriously accept that a mild, 60-year-old journalist put up such a fight that he had to be killed, and it does not explain why one of the agents sent to Istanbul was carrying a bone saw, or why the Turks said they had evidence that Mr. Khashoggi was tortured and dismembered. Nor does it explain why it took the Saudis more than two weeks to acknowledge even that Mr. Khashoggi was dead.”

In a separate story The Times also reports that Khashoggi was the target of a social media campaign to silence and discredit him, as well as other dissenters. The paper describes a “troll farm” operated by the Saudi government  that employs a “well-organized army of ‘social media specialists’ via group chats in apps like WhatsApp and Telegram, sending them lists of people to threaten, insult and intimidate; daily tweet quotas to fill; and pro-government messages to augment.”

President Trump has said he believes the Saudi explanation for the Khashoggi killing, but The Times reports that the CIA has reviewed an audio recording of the killing made by the Turkish government that proves that Khashoggi was intentionally tortured, killed, and dismembered.

One theory holds that US officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Trump are avoiding listening to the recording because it will force them to confront the truth and do something about it.

Bathroom Break: The Trump administration is considering federal rules that would define gender according to a person’s genitalia at birth, rolling back Obama era guidelines that recognized and protected transgender people.

The recent movement to define sexual identity as a matter of choice has spawned fights over everything from the use of bathrooms to participation in athletic events.

The NY Times reports that it has obtained an internal memo that says the government  needs to define gender “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.”The plan would be to establish a definition  of sexual identity under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance.

Fraud Warning: In his campaign to create fear to motivate his voters, President Trump yesterday tweeted out a warning about voter fraud, a nearly non-existent phenomenon that has become a Republican device to frighten and eliminate people who  vote against them. Trump said, “All levels of government and Law Enforcement are watching carefully for VOTER FRAUD, including during EARLY VOTING. Cheat at your own peril. Violators will be subject to maximum penalties, both civil and criminal!”

The fraud is in the warning. By the end of December 2016 there were four documented cases of voter fraud, although later on there were cases in which there were people who voted — felons for instance — who should not have been allowed. The biggest estimate came from the right wing Heritage Foundation, which said there were 1,000 cases of voter fraud in 2016 out of nearly 130 million votes cast, hardly enough to influence the election for national dog catcher.

The Russian Meme: With the midterm elections only weeks away, federal prosecutors say the Russians are still trying to influence US elections two years after their operations were revealed in the 2016 presidential election. In the espionage world, it’s known as “active measures.”

The US government this past week unsealed a criminal complaint against a Russian woman described as the paymistress for Moscow’s “information war.”

Prosecutors say Elena Khusyaynova was the paymaster for Russian disinformation scheme and was charged with one count of conspiring to defraud the United States. That included, according to the charges, “social media operations, web content, advertising campaigns, infrastructure, salaries, travel, office rent, furniture and supplies, and the registration of legal entities.”

One of the aims, according to the charges, has been to sew racial discord among American voters. One Russian Facebook post said, “If only media had been as bothered by Obama’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood as they are by Trump’s fake ties to Russia.”

The Caravan: Hundreds of Central American refugees who were blocked at the border by both Mexican and Guatamalan authorities yesterday resorted to swimming and makeshifts rafts to cross a river into Mexico. They are trying to reach the United States.

They include young mothers and little children despite President Trump’s claim Friday that, “These are some bad people coming through. These aren’t babies, these aren’t little angels coming into our country.”

History Revealed: The high waves of Hurricane Michael have revealed the remains of 15 wooden ships washed ashore in a hurricane in 1899. The ships were swept onto Dog Island in the Florida Keys and long ago buried by shifting sands but now the frames and hulls are clearly visible.

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