Tuesday Reads: Enemies of the People (Trump, Barr, and the NYT)

Posted: June 11, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Good Morning!!

The New York Times has really bitten the dust this time. Yesterday they announced they will no longer run any political cartoons. Not only are NYT editors terrified of offending Trump and his base, but also they clearly have no sense of humor.

Chapette reacted to his firing at his personal website: The end of political cartoons at The New York Times.

All my professional life, I have been driven by the conviction that the unique freedom of political cartooning entails a great sense of responsibility.

In 20-plus years of delivering a twice-weekly cartoon for the International Herald Tribune first, and then The New York Times, and after receiving three OPC awards in that category, I thought the case for political cartoons had been made (in a newspaper that was notoriously reluctant to the form in past history.) But something happened. In April 2019, a Netanyahu caricature from syndication reprinted in the international editions triggered widespread outrage, a Times apology and the termination of syndicated cartoons. Last week, my employers told me they’ll be ending in-house political cartoons as well by July. I’m putting down my pen, with a sigh: that’s a lot of years of work undone by a single cartoon – not even mine – that should never have run in the best newspaper of the world.

I’m afraid this is not just about cartoons, but about journalism and opinion in general. We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in.

Cartoon by Chappette

In 1995, at twenty-something, I moved to New York with a crazy dream: I would convince the New York Times to have political cartoons. An art director told me: “We never had political cartoons and we will never have any.“ But I was stubborn. For years, I did illustrations for NYT Opinion and the Book Review, then I persuaded the Paris-based International Herald Tribune (a NYT-Washington Post joint venture) to hire an in-house editorial cartoonist. By 2013, when the NYT had fully incorporated the IHT, there I was: featured on the NYT website, on its social media and in its international print editions. In 2018, we started translating my cartoons on the NYT Chinese and Spanish websites. The U.S. paper edition remained the last frontier. Gone out the door, I had come back through the window. And proven that art director wrong: The New York Times did have in-house political cartoons. For a while in history, they dared.

Along with The Economist, featuring the excellent Kal, The New York Times was one of the last venues for international political cartooning – for a U.S. newspaper aiming to have a meaningful impact worldwide, it made sense. Cartoons can jump over borders. Who will show the emperor Erdogan that he has no clothes, when Turkish cartoonists can’t do it ? – one of them, our friend Musa Kart, is now in jail. Cartoonists from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Russia were forced into exile. Over the last years, some of the very best cartoonists in the U.S., like Nick Anderson and Rob Rogers, lost their positions because their publishers found their work too critical of Trump. Maybe we should start worrying. And pushing back. Political cartoons were born with democracy. And they are challenged when freedom is.

I agree that this isn’t just about cartoons. Trump is succeeding in his war against the press, and the editors of the New York Times are helping him. Twitter commentary from two cartoonists:

Thread from Pat Bagley. More tweets on Twitter

Continuing on the subject of press freedom, CNN’s Jim Acosta has a book out: The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America. Sam Donaldson reviewed the book at CNN:

Reading Jim Acosta’s new book “Enemy of the People” is like watching a train wreck in progress, with passengers bracing for the inevitable crash.

Friends and critics agree we have never seen a president like Donald J. Trump, whose disdain, even contempt and apparent hatred for many members of the press is almost daily on display.
Acosta cites instance after instance when this President and many of his staff show that they are bent on interfering with the ability of reporters to bring the public an accurate account of the administration’s stewardship.

For most of his adult life, President Trump courted the press, lived for its attention, even for a time pretended he was someone else when calling reporters to sing Trump’s praises. Whether now he truly believes that the mainstream press, as he says, reports “fake” news and is the “enemy of the American people,” or that such language is simply part of a tactic meant to stoke the anger of his “base” while escaping an objective accounting of his actions doesn’t matter. The effect is to undermine the credibility of the media, leaving him free to pursue policies that harm us at home and abroad….

History shows that tyrants and would-be tyrants always attempt to destroy a free press. And that is why the First Amendment to our Constitution specifically forbids government from interfering with the work of the press.

Read the rest at CNN. I don’t know if I’ll read Acosta’s book, but what Donaldson has to say is vitally important.

I’m feeling so discouraged about the Democratic primary. There are far too many candidates and the ones leading the pack are pathetic. Biden, Buttigieg and Sanders? Please. At this point, I think Trump will win a second term unless his dementia gets so bad the press finally has to begin writing about it.

Eugene Robinson writes at The Washington Post: We don’t need 23 presidential candidates. There’s another important role to fill.

Dear Democratic presidential candidates: I know all 23 of you want to run against President Trump, but only one will get that opportunity. If you truly believe your own righteous rhetoric, some of you ought to be spending your time and energy in another vital pursuit — winning control of the Senate.

I’m talking to you, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, who would have a good chance of beating incumbent Republican Cory Gardner. I’m talking to you, Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, who could knock off GOP incumbent Steve Daines. I’m even talking to you, Beto O’Rourke, who would have a better chance than any other Texas Democrat against veteran Republican John Cornyn.

And I’m talking to you, too, Stacey Abrams of Georgia, even though you haven’t jumped in. You came within a whisker of being elected governor, and you have a national profile that would bring in a tsunami of campaign funds. You could beat Republican David Perdue — and acquire real power to translate your stirring eloquence into concrete action.

I agree that we absolutely need Senate candidates, but the even greater problem is the candidates that are topping the polls. Biden, Sanders, and even Warren are too old. Biden and Sanders have far too many negatives in their past histories. Buttigieg is too inexperienced, and can you really imagine him beating Trump? More from Robinson on the importance of winning the Senate:

As the Republican Party has long understood, it’s all about power. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) could not care less about lofty words and high ideals. Coldly and methodically, he has used his power to block widely supported progressive measures such as gun control, to enact a trickle-down economic agenda that favors the wealthy and to pack the federal bench with right-wing judges whom we’ll be stuck with for decades.

We all remember how McConnell refused even to schedule hearings for President Barack Obama’s final Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, ostensibly because the vacancy occurred during an election year. Were you surprised when he said recently that if a seat were to come open in 2020, he would hasten to confirm a replacement? I wasn’t. That’s how McConnell rolls. He exercises his power to its full extent and is not bothered by what you or I or anyone else might think. Charges of hypocrisy do not trouble his sweet slumber.

McConnell is not going to be reasoned, harangued or shamed into behaving differently. The only way to stop him is to take his power away, and the only way to do that is for Democrats to win the Senate.

Another danger we face is Cover-Up General Barr’s hostile takeover of the Justice Department. NBC News reports: New details of Barr’s far-reaching probe into ‘spying’ on Trump 2016 campaign.

The Justice Department on Monday offered new insight into what it called a “broad” and “multifaceted” review of the origins of the Russia investigation, and sought to assure lawmakers that the probe ordered by President Donald Trump would work to protect sensitive intelligence at the heart of it.

In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said the investigation — referred to throughout as a “review” — would evaluate whether the counterintelligence investigation launched in 2016 into potential contacts between foreign entities and individuals associated with Donald Trump’s campaign “complied with applicable policies and laws.”

“There remain open questions relating to the origins of this counterintelligence investigation and the U.S. and foreign intelligence activities that took place prior to and during that investigation. The purpose of the Review is to more fully understand the efficacy and propriety of those steps and to answer, to the satisfaction of the Attorney General, those open questions,” Boyd wrote.

DOJ announced in May that Attorney Gen. William Barr had assigned John Durham, the U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut, to oversee a review long called for by Trump into whether the Russia probe, launched in the heat of the presidential campaign, was influenced by politics and whether established protocols were followed involving the surveillance of Trump campaign officials.

A counterpoint from former CIA Chief of Station John Sipher at The Washington Post: Trump’s conspiracy theories about intelligence will make the CIA’s job harder.

President Trump’s attempts to craft a public narrative that a government conspiracy was aimed at his presidential campaign moved off Twitter and into the real world of official documents last month. Trump issued a directive assigning Attorney General William P. Barr to probe the origins of the Russia investigation, giving Barr the authority to declassify secret intelligence. As the president stated, “We’re exposing everything.”

The order directly undercuts Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, who is responsible for both protecting and potentially releasing intelligence. And it suggests that Trump is still disputing the fact that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

The president hardly needs to create a public furor to determine what the intelligence community knew about Russian interference, when they knew it or how they learned it. The CIA would gladly provide detailed briefings to him, the attorney general or anyone Trump might request one for. There are well-established means of sharing information within the executive branch. If the president wants to see the specific intelligence, he can.

But that’s not what Trump wants, is it?

But a private inquiry would not provide Trump with the political weapon of a public scapegoat. If he’s looking to discredit the intelligence behind the unanimous assessment by U.S. agencies in 2016 — since affirmed by the Mueller report, numerous indictments and no shortage of public evidence — he seems to want someone to blame. The recent directive hints at Trump’s eagerness to find a CIA version of his favorite targets at the FBI: James B. Comey, Peter Strzok, Bruce Ohr, Andrew McCabe or Robert S. Mueller III’s “angry Democrats.”

Creating a boogeyman inside the CIA is probably an effective tool if Trump’s goal is to persuade voters that he faced a “coup” and that the Russian attack was a “hoax,” as he has claimed. The necessary secrecy of the CIA’s activities makes it easy to spin a conspiracy and scare the public. A weaponized charge can appear simple and compelling, while the CIA’s ability to respond is limited; the issues involved are complicated and hard to explain in the length of a tweet. It is not hard to whip up fear and assume the worst of a powerful and shadowy secret agency if the most powerful man in the world is willing to deceive the public in the process.

That’s it for me today. What stories have you been following?

Monday Fresh Hell Reads

Posted: June 10, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: 2020 Elections, Afternoon Reads | 11 Comments

Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!

This weekend celebrated Pride!  Please enjoy these pictures from the New Orleans celebration!

 

If you ever had any serious doubt about the entire Republican Party having topped its performance during the Tea Pot Dome scandal or Watergate, look no further than today’s headlines.  I’m not sure how we’re going to stop this when there’s basically half of each of the three branches actively working against the country’s interests and solely for their own.

From John Swaine writing for The Guardian: “Company part-owned by Jared Kushner got $90m from unknown offshore investors since 2017.  Overseas investment flowed to Cadre while Trump’s son-in-law works as US envoy, raising conflict of interest questions.”  So, first we’ll start with the Trump Family Crime Syndicate then move to Mitch McConnell.

A real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner has received $90m in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since he entered the White House as a senior adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump.

Investment has flowed from overseas to the company, Cadre, while Kushner works as an international envoy for the US, according to corporate filings and interviews. The money came through a vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven that guarantees corporate secrecy.

Kushner, who is married to Trump’s elder daughter Ivanka, kept a stake in Cadre after joining the administration, while selling other assets. His holding is now valued at up to $50m, according to his financial disclosure documents.

Cadre’s foreign funding could create hidden conflicts of interest for Kushner as he performs his work for the US government, according to some ethics experts, who raised concerns over the lack of transparency around the investments.

“It will cause people to wonder whether he is being improperly influenced,” said Jessica Tillipman, a lecturer at George Washington University law school, who teaches government ethics and anti-corruption laws.

Kushner resigned from Cadre’s board and reduced his ownership stake to less than 25% after he joined the White House, according to his attorneys. He failed to list Cadre on his first ethics disclosure, later adding the company and saying the omission was inadvertent. Cadre says he is not actively involved in the company’s operations.

The names of the foreigners investing in Cadre via Goldman Sachs are not disclosed by the companies, which are not required to make the information public. Two sources familiar with the firm said much of the money came to the Cayman Islands vehicle from a second offshore tax haven, while some came from Saudi Arabia.

French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana

Jared Kushner appears destined for jail like his father.  From WAPO: “New revelations show the Trump administration is making the swamp even swampier.”  This is an op ed by Paul Waldman about Elaine Cho, Secretary of Transportation who is the beard wife of Mitch McConnell the Demon Majority Senate Head of K Street.

But the corruption of the Trump administration is so comprehensive and wide-ranging that it contains important — and depressing — lessons about how corruption works and why it is so difficult to eradicate.

Some facets of Trump corruption are new and unique. For instance, for two centuries nobody thought much about how the emoluments clause of the Constitution should be understood, because the idea that any president would use his office for personal financial gain was absurd. But then there are Trump administration scandals that sound extremely familiar:

The Transportation Department under Secretary Elaine Chao designated a special liaison to help with grant applications and other priorities from her husband Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky, paving the way for grants totaling at least $78 million for favored projects as McConnell prepared to campaign for reelection.

Chao’s aide Todd Inman, who stated in an email to McConnell’s Senate office that Chao had personally asked him to serve as an intermediary, helped advise the senator and local Kentucky officials on grants with special significance for McConnell — including a highway-improvement project in a McConnell political stronghold that had been twice rejected for previous grant applications.

This comes on the heels of news that Chao tried to include members of her family, which owns a large shipping firm that does extensive business in China, in official meetings with the Chinese government. If there’s anything unusual about these stories it’s that Chao was one of the few people in Trump’s cabinet who actually knew their way around government; among other things she was secretary of labor under George W. Bush. As someone who had been a member of the Washington elite before Trump arrived and will remain so after he departs, she might have been a less likely suspect for corruption.

According to Politico, Chao has been earning her keep.  “Chao created special path for McConnell’s favored projects.  A top Transportation official helped coordinate grant applications by McConnell’s political allies.”

The circumstances surrounding the Owensboro grant and another, more lucrative grant to Boone County, highlight the ethical conflicts in having a powerful Cabinet secretary married to the Senate’s leader and in a position to help him politically. McConnell has long touted his ability to bring federal resources to his state, which his wife is now in a position to assist.

Chao’s designation of Inman as a special intermediary for Kentucky — a privilege other states did not enjoy — gave a special advantage to projects favored by her husband, which could in turn benefit his political interests. In such situations, ethicists say, each member of a couple benefits personally from the success of the other.

“Where a Cabinet secretary is doing things that are going to help her husband get reelected, that starts to rise to the level of feeling more like corruption to the average American. … I do think there are people who will see that as sort of ‘swamp behavior,’” said John Hudak, a Brookings Institution scholar who has studied political influence in federal grant-making.

In fact, days after launching his 2020 reelection campaign McConnell asked Owensboro’s mayor to set up a luncheon with business and political leaders at which the senator claimed credit for delivering the grant.

“How about that $11 million BUILD grant?” McConnell asked the crowd rhetorically, according to the Owensboro Times. He then recalled his role in securing earlier grants to the city, adding, “It’s done a lot to transform Owensboro, and I was really happy to have played a role in that.”

McConnell’s role — along with Chao’s and Inman’s — was also celebrated by local officials when the $11.5 million grant was approved — to much local fanfare in December 2018.

Meanwhile, Trump is making pronouncements about things that only appear to exist in his fever dreams.  Here’s just a few of them.  From the NYT: “No Secret Immigration Deal Exists With U.S., Mexico’s Foreign Minister Says”.

The Mexican foreign minister said Monday that no secret immigration deal existed between his country and the United States, directly contradicting President Trump’s claim on Twitter that a “fully signed and documented” agreement would be revealed soon.

Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s top diplomat, said at a news conference in Mexico City that there was an understanding that both sides would evaluate the flow of migrants in the coming months. And if the number of migrants crossing the United States border was not significantly reduced, he said, both sides had agreed to renew discussions about more aggressive changes to regional asylum rules that could make a bigger impact.

“Let’s have a deadline to see if what we have works and if not, then we will sit down and look at the measures you propose and those that we propose,” Mr. Ebrard said, describing the understanding reached by negotiators last week.

Mr. Trump has insisted for several days that the agreement reached with Mexico Friday evening is a strong one, rejecting criticism that it largely called upon the Mexicans to take actions to reduce the flow of immigration that they had already agreed to months earlier.

Meanwhile, here is the new face of the US Immigration under Trumpism and White Christian Nationalists.  From NYT “Migrants in Custody at Hospitals Are Treated Like Felons, Doctors Say.”

Rom Rahimian, a medical student working at Banner-University Medical Center Tucson, was trying to help a 20-year-old Guatemalan woman who had been found late last year in the desert — dehydrated, pregnant and already in labor months before her due date. But the Border Patrol agents lingering in the room were making him uncomfortable.

The agents remained in the obstetrics ward night and day as physicians worked to halt her labor. They were present during her medical examinations, listened in on conversations with doctors and watched her ultrasounds, Mr. Rahimian said. They kept the television on loud, interfering with her sleep. When agents began pressing the medical staff to discharge the woman to an immigration detention facility, the doctors took action.

“It was a race against the clock to see if we can get her into any other situation,” Mr. Rahimian said. He called a lawyer and asked, “What can we do? What are her rights?”

As apprehensions of migrants climb at the southwest border, and dozens a day are taken to community hospitals, medical providers are challenging practices — by both government agencies and their own hospitals — that they say are endangering patients and undermining recent pledges to improve health care for migrants.

There’s that “pro-life” attitude at it again!

Yes! Nadler is still on the attack!!!

Chairman Nadler made the following statement:

“I am pleased to announce that the Department of Justice has agreed to begin complying with our committee’s subpoena by opening Robert Mueller’s most important files to us, providing us with key evidence that the Special Counsel used to assess whether the President and others obstructed justice or were engaged in other misconduct. The Department will share the first of these documents with us later today. All members of the Judiciary Committee — Democrats and Republicans alike — will be able to view them. These documents will allow us to perform our constitutional duties and decide how to respond to the allegations laid out against the President by the Special Counsel.

“Given our conversations with the Department, I will hold the criminal contempt process in abeyance for now. We have agreed to allow the Department time to demonstrate compliance with this agreement. If the Department proceeds in good faith and we are able to obtain everything that we need, then there will be no need to take further steps. If important information is held back, then we will have no choice but to enforce our subpoena in court and consider other remedies. It is critical that Congress is able to obtain the information we need to do our jobs, ensuring no one is above the law and bringing the American public the transparency they deserve.”

Brian Beutler suggests he go “rogue” writing this at Crooked Media.

Nadler doesn’t have an unruly temperament, but he is in many ways ideally suited to make a power play like this. He has served in the House for nearly 30 years, and is an accomplished, scholarly, respected legislator. The only political risk he faces as an elected representative is hypothetical: a surprise, AOC-like primary challenge from the left. And he has compelling interests in forging ahead over Pelosi’s objections.

Many of the House Democrats who have publicly called for an impeachment inquiry serve on his committee. Pelosi’s opposition to impeachment has placed Nadler in the difficult position of denying his committee members the inquiry he and they believe is necessary. But more importantly, it has damaged the committee as an institution. By forming House strategy based on the conclusion that impeachment shouldn’t happen, Democratic leaders have abandoned their chairmen to let Trump run roughshod over them. They have been inhibited from defending their prerogatives aggressively because confrontation with an increasingly lawless Trump might leave them no choice but to impeach him, and they have already foreclosed that option. Nadler has thus secured testimony from zero of the special counsel office’s witnesses, and zero of its prosecutors. He has been reduced to hosting a hearing with Richard Nixon’s former White House Counsel John Dean, and former federal prosecutors who had nothing to do with the Russia investigation. He surely does not want to wind down his career as the chairman who proved that the House Judiciary Committee could be contemptuously defied without consequences. But to vindicate his committee and the rule of law, he’d have to be willing to wield power aggressively.

The good news for him is he wouldn’t have to go rogue alone. Nadler could flip this switch today, all by himself, if he wanted to, but he could also make use of the fact that dozens of Democrats—more than enough to grind House business to a halt—would have his back. The mere threat of coordinated action would likely be enough to force House leaders to stop whipping against impeachment and start whipping for it. With their support, the House could pass a resolution in support of his inquiry, and neutralize Trump’s last defensive weapon against the impeachment inquiry he plainly fears.

I still am on the side of Nancy’s tactical approach but fast losing hope and faith that we’ll get rid of this dangerous POTUS and his krewe of grifters and religious nutters.

I could spend all day finding more examples popping up all over the place. All I really think is that whatever happens with Trump, the Dems must retake the Senate.

From The Hill: “Democrats hope some presidential candidates drop out — and run for Senate”.

Democrats facing a steep uphill climb to win back the Senate want Beto O’Rourke to reconsider his long-shot bid for president and take another look at running for the Senate in Texas, especially if his White House bid fails to pick up momentum.

They feel the same way about two other White House hopefuls who are polling at around 1 percent or lower: former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock.

Political experts give O’Rourke, Bullock and Hickenlooper little chance of winning the White House but say they could give GOP incumbents in their states a run for the money.

If they don’t run, Democrats will have a slimmer chance of winning in the states and taking back the Senate majority in either 2020 or 2022. And that would hamper a Democratic president — if the party can defeat President Trump.

Democratic senators won’t call out the low-polling presidential candidates by name in public, but they’re not shy about making the argument that some would do more for their party in Senate races than in the crowded presidential fight.

“The clock is running out for people who have not demonstrated any ability to mount a serious presidential bid to help make a real difference in their country by helping to turn the Senate,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), articulating a sentiment that other Senate Democrats expressed privately.

“It would be a shame if we elected a new president who faced the same enmity and obstruction in the Senate that Obama had to live through, all because a lot of candidates who had no shot wouldn’t run for winnable Senate seats,” he added.

So, that’s enough from me this afternoon!  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

 

 

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: June 8, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | 19 Comments

By Marc Chagall

Good Morning!!

Before I begin, a note on the art works in this post: Each has an interesting back story that you can read about at this link. Now on to today’s reads.

Have you heard the news? The “president” says the moon is “part of Mars.”

Yes, folks. The “president” is loony tunes and we have to deal with that every day of our lives now. It’s so exhausting.

Bloomberg: Trump Chides NASA for Focus on Moon After Focusing NASA on Moon.

President Donald Trump criticized NASA on Friday for focusing on travel to the moon, raising questions about the space agency’s mandate just months after his administration declared the U.S. would return astronauts to the moon within five years “by any means necessary.”

“For all the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon – We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!” Trump said on Twitter.

By Leon Bakst

The president’s tweet followed an announcement by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that it would allow private citizens to travel to the International Space Station and open some facilities to businesses to help pay for the plan to return to the moon. But his remarks stood in contrast to his previous directive that NASA return astronauts to the moon by 2025.

He unveiled the plan in December, saying: “The directive I’m signing today will refocus America’s space program on human exploration and discovery. It marks an important step in returning American astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972 for long-term exploration and use.” [….]

It’s unclear when the president decided NASA shouldn’t focus on the moon. Less than a month ago, Trump reiterated his enthusiasm for the plan in a tweet: “Under my Administration, we are restoring @NASA to greatness and we are going back to the Moon, then Mars. I am updating my budget to include an additional $1.6 billion so that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!”

And just last week, during a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump said: “We’ll be going to the moon. We’ll be going to Mars very soon. It’s very exciting. And from a military standpoint, there is nothing more important right now than space.”

Trump probably didn’t pay attention to what he was saying. Perhaps he was just reading words handed to him by his staff. Either that or he forgot. Who knows what’s going on in his dementia-addled brain?

But where did he get the idea that the moon is part of Mars?

Sarah Kaplan reacts to Trump’s tweet at The Washington Post: Fact check: What is the moon?

First, let’s give credit where credit is due: It is a fact that American astronauts landed on the moon 50 years ago (no matter what the conspiracy theorists say).

By Gustav Klimt

But the president might want to take another look at the space policy directive he signed his first year in office, which directed NASA to return to the lunar surface. He could also re-watch the big speech Vice President Pence gave this spring, in which he gave NASA a five-year deadline for the moon mission. And it could be worth reexamining his administration’s request that Congress add $1.6 billion to NASA’s budget for this purpose (maybe Pell Grant recipients will want it back?).

NASA has framed its lunar ambitions as a steppingstone to an eventual human mission to the Red Planet, which is possibly what Trump was referring to when he called the moon “a part” of Mars.

But just in case, it seems worth stating for the record: The moon is a satellite of Earth.

In fact, the moon is probably most accurately described as part of our own planet. Rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts show that lunar material carries chemical fingerprints almost identical to those found on Earth. Scientists think that the moon was formed from debris produced during an ancient, giant collision between Earth and a now-vanished protoplanet called Theia.

OK, so maybe the problem is just Trump’s inability to speak comprehensible English. Whatever the problem is, we’re stuck with it for now; and this lunatic has control over our nuclear arsenal.

I haven’t watched the Netflix series “When They See Us” yet, but I’ve been following the fallout that has hit former prosecutor and author Linda Fairstein. Fairstein led sex crimes unit prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s office for many years (1976-2002) and was the inspiration for the long-running TV show Law and Order SVU. She prosecuted the case against the Central Park Five. Her portrayal in Ava DuVernay’s miniseries has suddenly focused public attention on Fairstein’s role in the case.

By Max Ernst

I need to watch the program and read more about Fairstein’s history before I buy into everything that is being said about her. I know that filmmakers tend to take liberties with the facts and compress people and events to make their points. For example, the popular Netflix series “Making a Murderer” is loaded with inaccuracies. However, the backlash against Fairstein began before the miniseries came out. Last November, the Mystery Writers of American were forced to withdraw the “Grand Master Award” they had planned to award two Fairstein. From the Washington Post last November:

On Tuesday, Fairstein, the former chief of the sex-crimes unit at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, was awarded the association’s Grand Master Award, its highest honor. “How is THIS news for a thrilling surprise,” she wrote on Twitter. “I am Mystery Writers of America 2019 GRANDMASTER…..I’m pinching myself.”

She wasn’t the only one surprised. In a matter of hours, fellow novelists were calling on the association to take the award back.

The problem wasn’t her writing. It was Fairstein’s role as a prosecutor in the Central Park Five jogger rape case, one of the most infamous wrongful conviction cases in New York history.

On Fairstein’s role in the Central Park Five case:

Fairstein was not the lead prosecutor on the case, but as sex crimes unit chief, she was the supervisor.

By Salvador Dali

She was present while the suspects were interrogated for hours, describing her role in a 2002 interview with the New Yorker as being “the 800-pound gorilla, to help [the lead prosecutor] and the cops get the resources they needed.” Four of the five boys ultimately falsely confessed on video under pressure. In 2002, however, a serial rapist, Matias Reyes, came forward and said he was the real attacker — a confession bolstered by the fact that his DNA matched the semen found on the victim. The five teenagers were later exonerated.

But as recently as Tuesday, Fairstein has continued to suggest that the Central Park Five are guilty of something — if not the rape, then assault. Fairstein has held steadfast to the belief that “these five men were participants, not only in the other attacks that night but in the attack on the jogger,” as she summarized it to the New Yorker in 2002. Fairstein contended the boys simply “moved on” before Reyes finished the assault, leaving his DNA behind — despite the fact that Reyes has insisted he acted alone.

As recently as July 2018, after thousands of pages of documents from the case were released, Fairstein penned an essay for the New York Law Journal defending the investigation and prosecution, insisting the confessions were not coerced.

From The New York Times yesterday: Linda Fairstein Dropped by Her Publisher After TV Series on the Central Park 5.

Linda Fairstein, a prominent sex-crimes prosecutor who became a successful crime novelist, was dropped by her publisher this week after a Netflix mini-series renewed focus on her role in the wrongful conviction of five teenagers for a brutal rape.

By Rene Magritte

Since the series, “When They See Us,” premiered last week, Ms. Fairstein, 72, has been the target of tremendous public outrage, including online petitions and a #CancelLindaFairstein hashtag. This week, she resigned from a number of prominent boards, including that of Vassar College, her alma mater.

On Friday, a spokeswoman for Dutton, the Penguin Random House imprint that published Ms. Fairstein, said that she and Dutton “decided to terminate their relationship.” A person with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details were confidential, said that Dutton was buying out Ms. Fairstein’s contract.

This piece at The Grio by Sophia A. Nelson got quite a bit of attention on Twitter a couple of days ago: Karma is Real: Why Central Park Five should push for racist prosecutor Linda Fairstein to be disbarred. Check it out if you’re interested.

I’ll wrap up this post with the latest Russia/Mueller Report news:

CNN: Mystery company off the hook from Mueller subpoena and contempt of court charge.

The anonymous foreign-government-owned company that fought a subpoena in the special counsel investigation for months appears to be off the hook, while prosecutors continue to put significant resources into investigating what Robert Mueller pursued related to the company, according to newly unsealed court records.

Federal judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court stopped fining the company in February, when it turned almost 1,000 pages of documents over to Mueller.

By Aubrey Beardsley

The court fight dragged on from February into April, however, because Mueller’s team and other prosecutors believed the company had kept records from them, according to the newly unsealed information.

She finally deciding [sic] the company was no longer in contempt on April 17.

Read the details at CNN. Will we ever find out the name of the company?

Natasha Bertrand: New subpoena for Roger Stone’s former aide offers glimpse at ongoing investigation.

A former aide to political operative Roger Stone has turned over to a grand jury all of his text messages with Stone from October 2016 to March 2017, as well as the written agenda for Stone while he was at the Republican National Convention in 2016.

The aide, Andrew Miller, turned over the documents in response to a federal grand jury subpoena following his two-hour testimony last Friday before the body, according to communications between Miller’s lawyer and the government that were reviewed by POLITICO.

The subpoena offers a glimpse into the government’s ongoing investigation of Stone, an informal Trump campaign adviser who was indicted in January on charges of lying to Congress and the FBI about his dealings with WikiLeaks during the 2016 election. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting a trial, set for November.

Get all the details at Politico.

Quinta Jurecic: The New York Times: 4 Disturbing Details You May Have Missed in the Mueller Report.

By Giorgio de Chirico

After two years of silence, the special counsel Robert Mueller recently made his first public remarks — to complain, it seemed, that no one had read his report. “We chose those words carefully,” Mr. Mueller said, “and the work speaks for itself.”

But at a dense 440-plus pages, if the report speaks for itself, it takes a great deal of time and focus to listen to what it has to say. Mr. Mueller tells a complicated story of “multiple, systematic” efforts at Russian election interference from which the Trump campaign was eager to benefit. And he describes a president eager to shut down an investigation into his own abusive conduct. This is far from, as the president put it, “no collusion, no obstruction.”

The document is packed with even more details, ranging from the troubling to the outright damning. Yet these have been lost in the flurry of discussion around the report’s release.

Even the most attentive reader could have trouble keeping track of the report’s loose ends and dropped subplots. Here are four of the most surprising details that you might have missed — and none of them are favorable to the president.

Again, you’ll have to read the details at the link. The incidents Jurecic addresses are evidence of Trump coordination with Wikileaks, Trump’s efforts to get Clinton’s “missing emails,” Manafort’s sharing of insider polling data, and Trump’s attempt to get Cory Lewandowski involved in firing Jeff Sessions.

William Saletan at Slate offers a detailed breakdown of Bill Barr’s lies about the Mueller report: Barr Is Lying About Mueller’s Evidence. Read it at Slate.

What else is happening? What stories have you been following?

Friday Reads

Posted: June 7, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | 14 Comments

Good Morning Sky Dancers!

Well, another week has gone and I’m not going to say it was a good one for those of us that care about our country and the rule of law. Trump’s visit to Normandy Beach just seemed at odds with reality.  He read a speech basically praising the results of the ultimate sacrifice of Allied forces while actively trying to end everything that resulted from that sacrifice.  I am unable to process why some one so unconcerned with the past or the future of humanity is given a platform.  I can’t even think about what his competitive Independence Day spectacle will bring to the Lincoln Monument.

Here’s a few WTF headlines that I just can’t stomach.

From the AP: “US opens new mass facility in Texas for migrant children” written by Garance Burke.  We once rescued people from camps instead of building them.

The federal government is opening a new mass facility to hold migrant children in Texas and considering detaining hundreds more youths on three military bases around the country, adding up to 3,000 new beds to the already overtaxed system.

The new emergency facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, will hold as many as 1,600 teens in a complex that once housed oil field workers on government-leased land near the border, said Mark Weber, a spokesman for Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The agency is also weighing using Army and Air Force bases in Georgia, Montana and Oklahoma to house an additional 1,400 kids in the coming weeks, amid the influx of children traveling to the U.S. alone. Most of the children crossed the border without their parents, escaping violence and corruption in Central America, and are held in government custody while authorities determine if they can be released to relatives or family friends.

And, of course, these camps are basically for profit prisons. 

Prison abolition movements and the movement to Abolish ICE are intimately linked not only through activist ideology, but also through their communities’ shared history. Mass incarceration and the broken immigration system are both connected to U.S. policies of drug criminalization and border enforcement beginning with the War on Drugs in the 1980s and ramped up with the subsequent War on Terror. The term “immigration industrial complex,” which sociologist Tanya Golash-Boza coined in 2009, draws parallels between mass deportation and mass incarceration, specifically the confluence in both of private and powerful interests, fear mongering, and “other-ization” of targeted communities.

The leading corporations running the private immigrant detention system, CoreCivic and GEO group, are the same corporations that have profited for decades off the mass incarceration of Black and Brown communities. As these corporations rake in exorbitant profits from the detention of undocumented migrants with massiveICE contracts, detention itself serves as a central mechanism of the ICE’s state-sanctioned repression and abuse. In FY 2018, CoreCivic’s contracts alone amounted to $7.4 billion. This profit motive is a central component of activists’ calls for ICE’s abolition. Human rights groups repeatedly have exposed inhumane conditions in ICE detention, as well as brutal treatment, sexual abuse, and extreme medical neglect. Rates of miscarriage in ICE detention have doubled in recent years, and 164 migrants died in ICE custody between 2003 and 2017, according to ICE data. Leading causes of death in the report include asphyxia, heart failure, and suicide. Twenty-two migrants have died in ICE custody since the body published its report on detainee deaths in 2017.

Meanwhile, the Trump family crime syndicate used taxpayer dollars to send its members and minions on holiday.  From WAPO:  “‘These boys were on a holiday’: Trump family members promote themselves, and businesses, on European trip.”

The question of who is paying for the family members’ participation — and whether American taxpayers will be on the hook — has emerged as an unresolved subplot, with newspapers in Scotland and London scouring State Department databases and reporting on the fancy hotels and expensive limousines contracted by the U.S. government.

During the trip, the Trump children have documented their exploits in Instagram posts — touring Buckingham Palace! observing the aerial flyover in Normandy! pouring pints behind the bar in Doonbeg! — in a modern-day slide show of “wish-you-were-here!” family vacation moments for the public back home. At times, the images appeared discordant with the aims of a U.S. government delegation representing the nation’s geostrategic interests.

“Questions surrounding the family on this trip come from Trump’s decision not to divest from his business and hiring Ivanka and Jared,” said John Wonderlich, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, an open-government advocacy group that has sought to document potential conflicts of interest for the Trump family.

“It’s not utterly inappropriate for family members to be involved in a state dinner, but are they trying to show they are united and that the business and family interests are the same?” Wonderlich said. “We’re always left in doubt about what their intentions are. You can’t say it’s just a family.”

Trump aides scoffed at such questions and privately pointed out that past presidents have traveled with family members, including children. Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush brought their children on some foreign trips, and former aides said there was nothing inherently untoward about such arrangements.

Susan Glasser-writing for the New Yorker–reminds us how incensed Republicans would be if any Democrat had done any of this in her piece “Republicans Have Become the Except-When-Trump-Does-It Party”.

Even while he was in Europe this week, gushing about the “fantastic” Royal Family and the “tremendous crowds of well-wishers,” Trump was pushing his fellow-Republicans to agree to a course that virtually none of them supports as a matter of policy or principle. Trump is threatening to impose a series of punitive tariffs on Mexico unless it does the impossible and somehow halts the escalating flow of drugs and migrants across the border. Trump announced his tariff threat in a tweet a few days before heading to Europe, leaving Vice-President Mike Pence and various advisers behind in Washington to deal with the fallout. High-level Mexican officials rushed to the U.S. capital to try to negotiate a way out before Trump’s self-imposed Monday deadline, while a larger-than-usual group of Republican senators tried, sounding almost desperate at times, to signal their opposition to the tariffs without enraging the President. Words like “revolt” and “rebellion” were thrown around in the coverage.

But Trump, thousands of miles away, didn’t mind. In fact, he seemed delighted by the fuss his tariff plan had kicked up. “Tariffs are a beautiful thing,” he told Ingraham in that same Fox News interview, at the American cemetery in Normandy. “It’s a beautiful word if you know how to use them properly.” And no, he said, he wasn’t really worried about his party either. “Republicans should love what I’m doing,” he told her, while admitting that even he wasn’t sure where this is all going to lead.

Once again, we see this headline: “Trump plans to declare new national emergency to impose tariffs”.

President Trump is planning to declare a new national emergency in order to implement sweeping tariffs on Mexico over the flow of Central American migrants to the U.S., according to a draft document of the declaration reviewed by The Hill.

According to the document, the new emergency is necessary due to “the failure of the Government of Mexico to take effective action to reduce the mass migration of aliens illegally crossing into the United States through Mexico.”

The new emergency declaration would follow a February emergency declaration, which Trump used to justify sending National Guard troops to support Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials at the southern border.

The draft document signals that the White House believes that imposing the tariffs under the February emergency declaration might not pass legal muster. But it remains unclear if a final decision has been made to invoke another emergency. The White House did not answer questions about the document.

Officials from the White House counsel’s office and the Justice Department floated the idea of a new declaration this week during a closed-door meeting with Republican senators.

The White House has said it plans to impose the tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the president to take unilateral action to counter an “unusual and extraordinary threat” in times of national emergency.

The Equity Markets and the economy are showing signs of just how bad these Tariffs have hit US businesses and consumers.  Meanwhile, the survivors of real emergency continue to wait for help from the Federal Government.  My daughter just got back from Puerto Rico where she spent the week while her husband was working with one of the manufacturing plants there. She said there were basically more wild horses running around the countryside than people living there.  We continue to hear stories of flooding and the Florida hurricane survivors not to mention those impacted by Wild Fires.  Our priorities these days are as twisted as Trump’s mind and amorality.  From CNBC: “Jobs creation slows dramatically with payrolls up just 75,000 in May, much worse than expected”.

Job creation decelerated strongly in May, with nonfarm payrolls up by just 75,000 even as the unemployment rate remained at a 50-year low, the Labor Department reported Friday.

The decline was the second in four months that payrolls increased by less than 100,000 as the labor market continues to show signs of weakening. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a gain of 180,000.

In addition to the weak total for May, the previous two months’ reports saw substantial downward revisions. March’s count fell from 189,000 to 153,000 and the April total was taken down to 224,000 from 263,000, for a total reduction of 75,000 jobs.

Stock futures fell and bond yields dropped in reaction to the report. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures turned negative before reversing course and turning positive. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to its lowest level since September 2017.

I’m personally still have a problem with all this.  It’s especially true because here’s the other side:

Joe Biden reverses course on Hyde abortion amendment  —  ATLANTA (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is reversing course and declaring that he no longer supports a long-standing congressional ban on using federal health care money to pay for abortions.
House Backs Off Holding Barr in Contempt in New Resolution  —  WASHINGTON — After weeks of pledging to hold Attorney General William P. Barr and the former White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II in contempt for defying subpoenas, House Democrats appear poised to pursue an alternative path to try to force them into sharing information.

The 59 House Democrats (and one Republican) who support impeachment

Debates are being held on the best approach to get rid of Trump.  I’d like to offer up that replacing him with Joe Biden is a very bad idea and that I would like to see him rot in jail.  But, doesn’t our constitution demand an impeachment inquiry at the very least?

(CNN)At a frank meeting this week, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler again lobbied to win Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s support for an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Nadler, who appealed to the speaker that the House’s court cases against the Trump administration would be bolstered by launching an impeachment inquiry, also offered two new arguments in the hopes of convincing Pelosi from moving off her steadfast opposition, according to a source with knowledge of the meeting.

First, Nadler argued opening an impeachment probe would centralize the House’s sprawling investigations now spread across various panels into just one: The House Judiciary Committee. He argued that the other committees looking into various Trump controversies and scandals could instead focus on moving the party’s legislative agenda, while his panel — with its unique expertise — would investigate the alleged crimes of Trump before deciding whether to formally vote on articles of impeachment. 

Secondly, Nadler made a technical argument that it would be easier for lawmakers to discuss the President’s alleged offenses on the House floor and in committees during a formal impeachment inquiry because House rules forbid members from disparaging individuals.

But Nadler met powerful resistance. 

First was from Pelosi, who said she would rather see Trump “in prison” than impeached, according to Politico. He was also rebuffed by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, who himself is also playing a major role investigating Trump and his conduct while in office, according to another source familiar with the matter.

The previously unreported details on Nadler’s pitch to Pelosi offer new insight into the under-the-radar effort by the House Judiciary chairman to try to sway the speaker to reconsider her opposition to launching an impeachment probe. It comes amid a fierce debate among congressional Democrats and presidential hopefuls about whether to impeach the President heading into the 2020 campaign.

All I know is something needs to be done.  There is not enough dye in the world to stop the amount of gray hair that’s popping up all over me and I’m long pass trying.  This is not only not normal.  It’s not consititutional.  Please, some one!  Stop this Crazy Madman!  Make a D-Day  plan to storm Trump Towers!

CBS Reports (1964): “D-Day Plus 20 Years – Eisenhower Returns to Normandy” shows another President returning to the Beaches.

The Allied invasion of Nazi-controlled France on June 6, 1944 was the largest military invasion in history, involving nearly 160,000 service members arriving by ship and air at Normandy. Its success turned the tide of World War II. Two decades after D-Day, former Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was Supreme Commander in charge of the operation, returned to Normandy. Eisenhower talked with CBS News’ Walter Cronkite about his experiences in June 1944, the tactical decisions behind Operation Overlord, and how British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was talked out of joining the invading forces. Eisenhower and Cronkite visited the Allies’ war room on England’s southern coast; the coast of France, including Pointe du Hoc and Omaha Beach; and the American military cemetery at St. Laurent-on-the-Sea. This special broadcast of “CBS Reports,” featuring newsreel footage of the invasion, originally aired in 19 countries around the world on June 5, 1964.

Thursday Reads: D-Day 75th Anniversary

Posted: June 6, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | 17 Comments

D-Day: U.S. navy patrol torpedo boats cross the English Channel as B-1s, known as Flying Fortresses, fly overhead.

Good Morning!!

Today is the 75th anniversary of D-Day. From History.com:

During World War II (1939-1945), the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. The Normandy landings have been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe.

Read more at the link.

To our eternal shame, our representative at the D-Day anniversary ceremonies is Donald Trump. I tried to watch his speech this morning, but I had to turn it off. In a maudlin monotone he read words that he likely had never seen before, expressing emotions he doesn’t have the capacity to feel.

AP: D-Day 75: Nations honor veterans, memory of fallen troops.

OMAHA BEACH, France (AP) — With the silence of remembrance and respect, nations honored the memory of the fallen and the singular bravery of all Allied troops who sloshed through bloodied water to the landing beaches of Normandy, a tribute of thanks 75 years after the D-Day assault that doomed the Nazi occupation of France and portended the fall of Hitler’s Third Reich.

Troops on a landing craft approach a Normandy beach.

French President Emmanuel Macron and President Donald Trump praised the soldiers, sailors and airmen, the survivors and those who lost their lives, in powerful speeches Thursday that credited the June 6, 1944 surprise air and sea operation that brought tens of thousands of men to Normandy, each not knowing whether he would survive the day.

“You are the pride of our nation, you are the glory of our republic and we thank you from the bottom of our heart,” Trump said, of the “warriors” of an “epic battle” engaged in the ultimate fight of good against evil.

In his speech, Macron praised the “unthinkable courage,” ″the generosity” of the soldiers and “the strength of spirit” that made them press on “to help men and women they didn’t know, to liberate a land most hadn’t seen before, for no other cause but freedom, democracy.”

He expressed France’s debt to the United States for freeing his country from the reign of the Nazis. Macron awarded five American veterans with the Chevalier of Legion of Honor, France’s highest award.

“We know what we owe to you vets, our freedom,” he said, switching from French to English. “On behalf of my nation I just want to say ‘thank you.’”

Nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy on D-Day. Of those 73,000 were from the United States, 83,000 from Britain and Canada.

From USA Today: European allies made the D-Day landing at Normandy possible. 75 years later, Trump questions those bonds, by John Fritze

President Donald Trump shared in a modern presidential tradition that dates back four decades when he stood Thursday at the edge of Omaha Beach in Normandy to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

While under attack from heavy machine gun fire from the German coastal defense forces, American soldiers wade ashore off the ramp of a U.S. Coast Guard landing craft.

While the ceremony honored the sacrifices made on June 6, 1944, Trump’s “America First” presidency and the international drama he has carried with him duringhis third trip to France meant the president delivered an address less heavily focused on international alliances than many of his predecessors.

Like past presidents, Trump paid homage to the 160,000 American and Allied troops who landed on D-Day, altering the course of World War II. But he offered little embrace ofinstitutions such as NATO that rose out of the ashes of the fighting. Trump did not mention NATO by name in his address….

The American president has in the pastaccused allies and NATO partners of “ripping off” the United States.

“It’s going to be a tough challenge for him,” Nicholas Burns, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO who served presidents of both parties, said before the speech. “What we learned from D-Day and the Second World War is that we need allies.”

Read more at the link.

For a personal remembrance of D-Day, I highly recommend this piece in The Washington Post Magazine by Barry Svrluga: My Grandfather’s Secret D-Day Journal.

In the summer of 1992, my family gathered in central Minnesota for my grandfather’s 70th birthday. We were there to celebrate William J. Svrluga Sr. — father, golfer, husband, engineer, grandfather, Cubs fan, cheapskate, retiree. Seven of us joined in the celebration: Bill Sr.’s wife, Ruth, my grandmother; his two sons, my father, Bill Jr., and my uncle Dick; their wives; my younger brother, Brad, and me.

From left, Bill Svrluga Jr., Barry Svrluga, Dick Svrluga and Bill Svrluga Sr. at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Normandy, France, on June 6, 2003. (Photo courtesy of the author)

At one point, maybe between the walleye and the turtle cheesecake, the conversation hit a lull. Uncle Dick filled it. “Okay, Dad,” he asked. “What are you most proud of in your life?” I think I half expected my grandfather to say the time he shot even-par 72. What could be better than that? This was chitchat, brag-­about-the-family stuff, set up on a tee. Instead, he knocked us over with his response. “D-Day,” he said.

I remember it as both matter-of-fact on his part and jarring to the rest of us. Why, if D-Day had been so important to him, had we never heard about D-Day? We knew he had been there, part of the Allied invasion of Normandy. Right then, it became apparent how little else we understood. As the 75th anniversary of D-Day approaches, I’m again aghast that I thought he could have answered anything else.

After his grandfather’s death, Svrluga’s father Bill Jr. discovered the written record his father had kept of the D-Day preparations and fighting. Excerpts are included in the article. I hope you’ll read it.

So many men remained silent about their experiences in WWII. My father never talked about the horrors of Guadalcanal until the last couple few years of his life. Even then, he didn’t share many details of the fighting. But apparently many soldiers recorded their experiences of D-Day, as I learned when I googled “d-day diary” while searching for the WaPo story.

Another interesting story from The New York Times Magazine about journalist Ernie Pyle: The Man Who Told America the Truth About D-Day, By David Chrisinger

Most of the men in the first wave never stood a chance. In the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944, thousands of American soldiers crawled down swaying cargo nets and thudded into steel landing craft bound for the Normandy coast. Their senses were soon choked with the smells of wet canvas gear, seawater and acrid clouds of powder from the huge naval guns firing just over their heads. As the landing craft drew close to shore, the deafening roar stopped, quickly replaced by German artillery rounds crashing into the water all around them. The flesh under the men’s sea-soaked uniforms prickled. They waited, like trapped mice, barely daring to breathe.

A blanket of smoke hid the heavily defended bluffs above the strip of sand code-named Omaha Beach. Concentrated in concrete pill boxes, nearly 2,000 German defenders lay in wait. The landing ramps slapped down into the surf, and a catastrophic hail of gunfire erupted from the bluffs. The ensuing slaughter was merciless.

But Allied troops kept landing, wave after wave, and by midday they had crossed the 300 yards of sandy killing ground, scaled the bluffs and overpowered the German defenses. By the end of the day, the beaches had been secured and the heaviest fighting had moved at least a mile inland. In the biggest and most complicated amphibious operation in military history, it wasn’t bombs, artillery or tanks that overwhelmed the Germans; it was men — many of them boys, really — slogging up the beaches and crawling over the corpses of their friends that won the Allies a toehold at the western edge of Europe.

That victory was a decisive leap toward defeating Hitler’s Germany and winning the Second World War. It also changed the way America’s most famous and beloved war correspondent reported what he saw. In June 1944, Ernie Pyle, a 43-year-old journalist from rural Indiana, was as ubiquitous in the everyday lives of millions of Americans as Walter Cronkite would be during the Vietnam War. What Pyle witnessed on the Normandy coast triggered a sort of journalistic conversion for him: Soon his readers — a broad section of the American public — were digesting columns that brought them more of the war’s pain, costs and losses. Before D-Day, Pyle’s dispatches from the front were full of gritty details of the troops’ daily struggles but served up with healthy doses of optimism and a reliable habit of looking away from the more horrifying aspects of war. Pyle was not a propagandist, but his columns seemed to offer the reader an unspoken agreement that they would not have to look too closely at the deaths, blood and corpses that are the reality of battle. Later, Pyle was more stark and honest.

Read the rest at the NYT.

More reads, links only:

David Frum at The Atlantic: The Ghosts of D-Day.

HuffPost: Trump Finally Arrives In Ireland For Taxpayer-Funded Visit To His Golf Resort.

The Washington Post: Trump to stay at Doonbeg, his money-losing golf course threatened by climate change.

The New York Times: Migrant Children May Lose School, Sports and Legal Aid as Shelters Swell.

The Intercept: Joe Biden worked to Undermine the Affordable Care Act’s Coverage of Contraception.

Politico: Pelosi tells Dems she wants to see Trump ‘in prison.’

NBC News: Warren wishes handcuffs for Trump, says Biden is wrong on abortion.

The Washington Post: Trump’s catastrophic fashion choices in England were not just a sign of bad taste.

Politico: Who’s in — and out — of the first Democratic debates.

Axios: Trump’s incredibly empty Cabinet.

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