Thursday Reads
Posted: October 17, 2019 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics 51 Comments
Elijah Cummings in Baltimore, 1997, Andre Chung, Baltimore Sun
Good Morning!!
I woke up this morning at 5:30 and I turned on the TV to see if there was any news. There was. Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings had died at age 68. What a heartbreaking loss for our country.
Reactions:
The Washington Post: Rep. Elijah Cummings, Democratic leader and regular Trump target, dies at 68.
Elijah E. Cummings, a Democratic congressman from Maryland who gained national attention for his principled stands on politically charged issues in the House, his calming effect on anti-police riots in Baltimore, and his forceful opposition to the presidency of Donald Trump, died early Thursday morning at Gilchrist Hospice Care, a Johns Hopkins affiliate in Baltimore. He was 68.
After undergoing an unspecified medical procedure, the Democratic leader did not return to his office this week, the Baltimore Sun reported. A statement from his office said that he had passed away due to “complications concerning longstanding health challenges.” Mr. Cummings was chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee and a leading figure in the Trump impeachment inquiry.
Born to a family of Southern sharecroppers and Baptist preachers, Mr. Cummings grew up in the racially fractured Baltimore of the 1950s and 1960s. At 11, he helped integrate a local swimming pool while being attacked with bottles and rocks. “Perry Mason,” the popular TV series about a fictional defense lawyer, inspired him to enter the legal profession.
“Many young men in my neighborhood were going to reform school,” he told the East Texas Review. “Though I didn’t completely know what reform school was, I knew that Perry Mason won a lot of cases. I also thought that these young men probably needed lawyers.”
In the Maryland House of Delegates, he became the youngest chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus and the first African American to serve as speaker pro tempore, the member who presides in the speaker’s absence.
In 1996, he won the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives that Kweisi Mfume (D) vacated to become NAACP president. Mr. Cummings eventually served as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and as ranking Democrat and then chairman of what became the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
He drew national attention as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief defender during 2015 congressional hearings into her handling of the attack three years earlier on U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya. The attack killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
He was “the quintessential speaking-truth-to-power representative,” said Herbert C. Smith, a political science professor at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md. “Cummings has never shied from a very forceful give-and-take.”
Here is Rep. Cummings last tweet.
ABC News quotes a statement from Cummings’ wife:
Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, the chairwoman of the Maryland Democratic Party and Cummings’ wife, said in a statement that Cummings was “an honorable man who proudly served his district and the nation with dignity, integrity, compassion and humility.”
“He worked until his last breath because he believed our democracy was the highest and best expression of our collective humanity and that our nation’s diversity was our promise, not our problem,” Rockeymoore Cummings said. “I loved him deeply and will miss him dearly.”
In other news, Trump is still Trump and he’s still occupying the people’s house.
Trump lackey Gordon Sondland is testifying at the impeachment hearing today. He seems to be claiming that he was completely in the dark about Trump’s and Giuliani’s machinations in Ukraine, even while he (Sondland) was carrying out their orders.
The Daily Beast: Sondland Throws Trump Under the Bus.
Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, will tell Congress that he was told by President Trump that he had to help his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani with his plan on Ukraine.
In his opening statement, which was obtained by The Daily Beast, Sondland will say: “I did not understand, until much later, that Mr. Giuliani’s agenda might have also included an effort to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate Vice President Biden or his son or to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the President’s2020 reelection campaign.”
“Based on the President’s direction, we were faced with a choice: We could abandon the goal of a White House meeting for President Zelensky, which we all believed was crucial to strengthening U.S.-Ukrainian ties and furthering long-held U.S. foreign policy goals in the region; or we could do as President Trump directed and talk to Mr. Giuliani to address the President’s concerns.”
Click the link to read the full statement. We’ll probably hear more details later on today.
I’m sure you’ve read Trump’s idiotic letter to Turkey’s Erdogan. This is from Bess Levin at Vanity Fair: “Is This Real?”: Trump Sends Third-Grade Reading-Level Letter to Erdogan.
Donald Trump has said or done something certifiably insane nearly every day of his presidency. And not like, “This guy’s a little kooky”-level insane, but full-on “Mr. President, put down the stapler and unhand the president of Finland”-level insane. But last week, apparently seeking to prove to the world that we ain’t seen nothing yet re: the depths of his mental instability, he wrote and reportedly proudly distributed the following letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for all the world to see:
The Turkish government was not amused. Middle East Eye: ‘We dumped it in the trash’: Trump’s letter to Erdogan gets hostile reception.
A leaked letter written by US President Donald Trump to Recep Tayyip Erdogan warning his Turkish counterpart not to be a “fool” has sent shockwaves around Turkey due to its lack of protocol and seriousness.
Dated 9 October, the day Erdogan launched an offensive in northeastern Syria against the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia, the letter aimed to make a deal between Turkey and the SDF and included an open economic sanctions threat.
Yet this wasn’t the part Turks focused on.
“It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don’t happen,” Trump wrote. “Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!” [….]
It has now been confirmed as genuine by the White House, but soon after the leak on Wednesday, thousands of Turks asked each other on Twitter and WhatsApp whether the letter was authentic or a joke.
“If this letter is real, Trump is absolutely completely crazy,” one Turk tweeted.
Turkish officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Middle East Eye that they responded to Trump’s letter in kind and with stronger language.
“We just dumped his letter into the trash,” one of them said.
The leak comes at a particularly sensitive time, with US Vice President Mike Pence touching down in Ankara on Thursday in a bid to seek a ceasefire between Turkey and the Kurdish-led SDF.
“This Trump letter to Erdogan is the most damaging correspondence that could’ve been leaked ahead of VP Pence’s visit to Ankara tomorrow,” Soner Cagaptay, a prominent Turkey expert tweeted on Wednesday.
“Now, Erdogan has no option but to delay ceasefire in Syria, less he be humiliated in front of his nation as weak and bowing to America’s threat.”
Trump was so proud of this letter that he bragged about it in the same meeting in which he attacked Nancy Pelosi as a “third-grade politician.” From the AP:
The administration called in congressional leadership to discuss the situation in Syria. The House had just voted, 354-60, to overwhelmingly oppose the president’s announced U.S. troop withdrawal, a rare bipartisan rebuke. Trump’s action has opened the door for a Turkish military attack on Syrian Kurds who have been aligned with the U.S. in fighting the country’s long-running war.
Trump kicked off the meeting bragging about his “nasty” letter to Turkish President Recep Erdogan, according to a Democrat familiar with the meeting who was granted anonymity to discuss it. In the letter, Trump warned the Turkish leader, with exclamation points, not to be “slaughtering” the Kurds. The person called Trump’s opening a lengthy, bombastic monologue.
Pelosi mentioned the House vote and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, started to read the president a quote from former Defense Secretary James Mattis on the need to keep U.S. troops in Syria to prevent a resurgent of Islamic State fighters.
But Trump cut Schumer off, complaining that Mattis was “the world’s most overrated general. You know why? He wasn’t tough enough.” Trump went on, “I captured ISIS.”
Pelosi explained to Trump that Russia has always wanted a “foothold in the Middle East,” and now it has one with the U.S. withdrawal, according to a senior Democratic aide who was also granted anonymity.
“All roads with you lead to Putin,” the speaker said.
Then it began.
Trump said to Pelosi, “I hate ISIS more than you do.”
Pelosi responded, “You don’t know that.”
Schumer intervened at one point and said, “Is your plan to rely on the Syrians and the Turks?”
Trump replied, “Our plan is to keep the American people safe.”
Pelosi said: “That’s not a plan. That’s a goal.”
Trump turned to Pelosi and complained about former President Barack Obama’s “red line” over Syria. According to Schumer, he then called her “a third-rate politician.”
At that point, the genteel Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House Majority Leader, interjected, “This is not useful.”
Pelosi and Hoyer stood and left the meeting. As they did, Trump said, “Goodbye, we’ll see you at the polls.”
From the White House driveway, Pelosi told reporters Trump was having some kind of “meltdown” inside. She said they had to leave because Trump was unable to grasp the reality of the situation.
Later, she would insist he even botched the insult, calling her “third-grade” rather than “third-rate.”
The impeachment inquiry never came up, she said.
Trump insisted later on Twitter that it was Pelosi who had a “total meltdown,” calling her “a very sick person!”
He also tweeted pictures from the room. “Do you think they like me?” he asked mockingly about one, showing Pelosi and Schumer looking exhausted and glum.
“Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!” he tweeted with another.
In that photo, Pelosi can be seen, surrounded by congressional leaders and military brass around a table at the White House, finger outpointed. She is standing up, literally, to Trump.
Pelosi turned the photo into the banner on her Twitter page.
No one likes him.
Mike Pence is in Turkey right now and it’s not going well.
Who knows what horrors today may bring. This is our reality now. Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread below.
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Sky Dancing 
Have a nice Thursday, Sky Dancers!! We will get through this somehow.
Just watching Nancy and what a tribute to a great man! He’s going to be missed! Rest in Power Sir!!!
I do believe the Ukraine thing is going to rid us of this orange plague! The evidence just keeps piling up. I’m trying to read the news about that crazy EU ambassador
He was only 68 … wow
I wonder what his long-term health problem was. No one is saying.
He had just been in the hospital and didn’t come back as expected. My guess would be he had some cancer that had not been diagnosed for some time but I imagine it could be other issues.
Whatever it was I’m sure the stress of dealing with the worst WH administration in the nation’s history did not help. I can’t even imagine the workload he must have been under, and add to it the last petty dig Dump made at him and Baltimore. Will Dump feel any remorse over that? Rhetorical question.
What a sad and terrible loss.
Indeed to Congressman Cummings’ family, Baltimore and the United States.
That’s the tape to your link up top if any one wants to hear/see .
I admired Rep Cummings so much. What a great heart, a great mind.
Yes, absolutely. I’m glad his mother was spared surviving her son.
What a shock – much too young. I’m glad he was able to do as much as he did up to the end.
What a contrast to the sniveling coward in the WH.
Elijah Cummings: a righteous man who believed in a better America, a better Baltimore
https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/dan-rodricks/bs-md-rodricks-cummings-1017-20191017-zgct7yb7cnbndp3auotwzg6nxu-story.html?fbclid=IwAR06GrBvskwAM5tIOxwfGPLdJXXStxbrrUHVXF_f0LhiqsTwLGpby8csvs8
Good gawdesses !!! That’s amazing!!!
Anyone else get a chill up their spine when Trump bleated, as the Dems walked out, “See you at the polls…”? Like he knows that the election is going to be fixed just like it was in 2016.
Be sure and look at it close up – the expressions on the Dump side of the table…..whoa boy.
Schumer and Pelosi look like they’re thinking “Here we are trying to talk sense to the 2 y.o. who’s set on blowing up the world, starting in the Middle East. The nightmare continues.”
At Vanity Fair, William D. Cohan suggests that Trump and his cronies are manipulating the stock market.
“THERE IS DEFINITE HANKY-PANKY GOING ON”: THE FANTASTICALLY PROFITABLE MYSTERY OF THE TRUMP CHAOS TRADES
If those two trades were made by the same buyer(s), that’s definitely fishy. If that buyer has even more wildly “lucky” trades, yup, insider trading.
well, that’s not good …
I’m gobsmacked again! How can this be legal?
I absolutely agree, that was my first thought. Putin will be sure to bring a security team to sweep his room for bugs (as in bed) No, I don’t think Trump will be in office too much longer; seeing Pence at his triumphant-ha-presser and it’s clear that they’re grooming him to take over, and he looked nervous as hell.
I couldn’t outdo this reply to that tweet you posted. Both Pitch perfect. Guess Evangelicals are kewl with killing actually living breathing babies … and old people … and women … and other christians
I was reading a lot of skepticism that “sanctions” would actually ever happen.
Trump’s top China adviser appears to have made up expert he regularly quoted
CNN Digital Expansion 2017. Ben WestcottChristine Romans-Profile-Image
By Ben Westcott and Christine Romans, CNN
Updated 10:27 AM ET, Thu October 17, 2019
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/16/politics/peter-navarro-ron-vara-trump-china-intl-hnk/index.html?fbclid=IwAR1Km1zq1ms6oosy9udZQXM2UFal3aGTuOyshYyeEncRCszSKa8TmjSCZtQ
Mulvaney Confirms Trump Held Up Ukraine Aid Over DNC Server Conspiracy
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mulvaney-confirms-trump-held-up-ukraine-aid-over-dnc-server-conspiracy?fbclid=IwAR0esD7VxqSa0mYkvJOfVEczmSrDg-ohktx7BfHwvhXS7babNzBP3gzYjoA
Okay, forget the hearings … Impeach the motherfucker now!
Great.
We could actually lock this particular barn door *before* the horse is stolen this time.
But what are the chances of that?
What is this “ethnic cleansing” shit? It’s ethnic genocide.
I think the two are synonymous? Cleansing being the term used by proponents, since they see the people at the lethal end as bugs.
It’s really getting on toward burn your passport time, isn’t it?
After I leave the US.
Colin Powell already spoke out.