Monday Reads: “Unprecedented Crisis”
Posted: August 17, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, Afternoon Reads | Tags: Trumpist Regime 31 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
You must read this piece in The New Republic by Walter Shapiro “Joe Biden’s Great Reclamation Project.” It’s coupled with this great illustration by Zohar Lazar. It’s difficult to deal with the level of indecency, corruption, lawlessness, and incompetency that have be the predominant features of these last four years. None of us can wait to get rid of it but I keep trying to imagine the incredible task of rebuilding alliances, trade agreements, confidence in institutions, normalcy and functionality. This is what Shapiro tackles. It’s all about the chaos in everything awaiting the Biden/Harris administration.
Only Franklin Roosevelt, taking the oath on a cloudy and gloomy March day in 1933, inherited comparable challenges. But the Depression was only an economic catastrophe, and Herbert Hoover, paralyzed though he may have been as president, was an honorable man. Barring a dramatic turnabout in the country’s fortunes, Biden will confront joblessness, disease, and the hateful legacy of the most lawless president in history. Much as in 1933, when establishment figures such as Walter Lippmann suggested that America required a dictator for the duration of the economic emergency, the country will greet Biden’s first year in office as a crucial test of whether our battered democracy can again flourish.
These existential questions mean that the pundit’s traditional late-campaign thought experiment of envisioning a Biden presidency requires an imaginative leap far beyond position papers and policy speeches. So many issues that were points of conflict during the Democratic primaries now seem—in the midst of a pandemic—as peripheral as John Kennedy and Richard Nixon squabbling over Quemoy and Matsu, two insignificant islands off the Chinese coast, during their 1960 debates. With Trump in apparent free fall after his disastrous Tulsa rally and his race-baiting embrace of Confederate statues, Biden, for the most part, has traded policy specifics for periodic reminders that he is neither a hate-monger nor a low-rent huckster peddling miracle virus cures from the White House.
Specifics are also in short supply for the simple reason that these days everyone in the Democratic Party, with the possible exception of John Edwards, can claim to be a Biden policy adviser. Like any traditional presidential candidate running a big-tent campaign, Biden distributes titles with the lavishness of a shady trace-your-British-ancestry firm. In addition to the campaign’s policy staffers and longtime outside advisers to the former vice president, Biden and Bernie Sanders with great fanfare in May announced unity task forces to supposedly meld the centrist and progressive wings of the party. In mid-July, the task forces unveiled an ambitious $2 trillion climate change plan (without explaining how it would get through a closely divided Senate) that prompted Trump to risibly claim that Biden wanted to “abolish the suburbs.” (The president did not explain where he thought Biden planned to put the existing land around cities.)
After nearly four years of Trump, it is hard to remember what a normal presidency feels like.
Indeed. But, it’s going to take a lot more than a normal president to handle this task. There is so much on the list that it’s amazing Shapiro doesn’t need a book volume to list them all. Each of the cabinet officers have been corrupt and incompetent. Every Department will have to be reset at their replacement. Then there are the two big problems of the economy and the Pandemic. Will he appoint czars for these? And then there’s the crisis in Justice and policing, will he hand this to Vice President Harris to work with congress on appropriate legislation and systemic change? What role will she play and what will land on her desk?
Former Admiral William McRaven writes today a WAPO Op Ed about the current attack on democracy and our federal government. “Trump is actively working to undermine the Postal Service — and every major U.S. institution” Trump has shown his willingness to do every legal and illegal dirty trick in the book to get elected. We have continuing Russian interference, Republican States blocking access to voting, and now this.
Today, as we struggle with social upheaval, soaring debt, record unemployment, a runaway pandemic, and rising threats from China and Russia, President Trump is actively working to undermine every major institution in this country. He has planted the seeds of doubt in the minds of many Americans that our institutions aren’t functioning properly. And, if the president doesn’t trust the intelligence community, law enforcement, the press, the military, the Supreme Court, the medical professionals, election officials and the postal workers, then why should we? And if Americans stop believing in the system of institutions, then what is left but chaos and who can bring order out of chaos: only Trump. It is the theme of every autocrat who ever seized power or tried to hold onto it.
Our institutions are the foundation of a functioning democracy. While they are not perfect, they are still the strongest bulwark against overzealous authority figures. The institutions give the people a voice; a voice in the information we receive, a voice in the laws we pass, a voice in the wars we fight, the money we spend and the justice we uphold. And a voice in the people we elect.
As Trump seeks to undermine the U.S. Postal Service and stop mail-in voting, he is taking away our voice to decide who will lead America. It is not hyperbole to say that the future of the country could depend on those remarkable men and women who brave the elements to bring us our mail and deliver our vote. Let us ensure they have every resource possible to provide the citizens of this country the information they need, the ballots that they request and the Postal Service they deserve.
Trump may have a war on the Post office, but Republicans in states have a direct war on voting. Take this headline today from The Advocate’s Sam Karlin here in Louisiana. “Louisiana mail-in voting would be rolled back in November under new proposal”. I’m pretty sure Republican leges are trying to do this every where possible.
Louisiana Sec. of State Kyle Ardoin has proposed a plan for the Nov. 3 presidential election that rolls back mail-in voting significantly from the recently-held summer elections, allowing only one category of people to vote by mail if they don’t meet the normal requirements–those who have tested positive for COVID-19.
The plan, submitted to lawmakers Monday morning, is surely to spark a new round of outcry from Democrats and advocacy groups who have sued the state for not doing enough to accommodate people at risk from the virus. If it passes, it will ensure Louisiana is one of eight states to require an excuse for voters to obtain an absentee ballot; the rest either mail all voters a ballot or make them available to everyone.
Then there’s this continuing nightmare of school openings.
This is eyepopping for our once great nation. “Only 17 states meet the WHO’s criteria for safely reopening a community.”
The U.S. attempt to return children to the classroom this fall has turned into a slow-motion train wreck, with at least 2,400 students and staff either infected with COVID-19 or self-isolating because of exposure, and the vast majority of large school districts opting to go online this summer amid rising cases of the virus.
President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have mostly waved off the situation unraveling this week in states like Georgia, Alabama, Indiana and Tennessee, where schools opened their doors after a months-long hiatus due to the pandemic — only to quickly backtrack as soon as infections popped back up.
Trump and DeVos have demanded that schools stay open full-time and threatened to pull federal funding if the institutions fail to do so. At a White House event this week, DeVos made no mention of the crisis in Georgia and elsewhere and said families shouldn’t be held “captive to other people’s fears or agendas.”
DeVos has “consistently said the decision to reopen should be made at the local level, and some schools may need to temporarily remain virtual based on local public health situation,” Angela Morabito, a spokesperson for the Education Department, told ABC News late Thursday in an emailed response to questions about the recent school closures.
“She’s also, for the last 30 years maintained that parents and families need options when it comes to the child’s education and that has never been more evident than now,” Morabito wrote. “Parents need to have access to safe, in-person options as well as distant or remote learning options if that is what is best for their family. The key word here is safe.”
But what is “safe” is not at all clear to most school officials and at the heart of a bitter debate unfolding just months ahead of the presidential election.
As all of this continues to take up the air waves, there’s stuff sneaking under and around them. There’s some coverage of this today but not enough. “US approves oil, gas leasing plan for Alaska Wildlife refuge. The Department of the Interior has approved an oil and gas leasing program within Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’. We got too much of the stuff now! Why do we need this?
The Trump administration on Monday took another step to opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling for oil and gas, potentially fulfilling a decades-long dream for Republicans.
Environmentalists, however, promised to fight opening up the coast plain of the refuge, a 1.56-million acre swath of land along Alaska’s northern Beaufort Sea coast, home to polar bears, caribous and other wildlife, after the Department of the Interior approved an oil and gas leasing program.
Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt signed the Record of Decision, which will determine a program for where oil and gas leasing will take place in the refuge’s coastal plain.
“The establishment of this program marks a new chapter in American energy independence,” Bernhardt said during a conference call with reporters.
“Years of inaction have given away to an informed and determined plan to responsibly tap ANWR’s energy potential for the American people for generations to come,” he said.
President Trump insisted Congress include a mandate providing for leasing in the refuge in a 2017 tax bill.
Over the last four decades, Republicans have attempted to open the refuge to drilling. President Bill Clinton vetoed a Republican bill to allow drilling in 1995, and Democrats blocked a similar plan 10 years later.
There’s just only so much we can all put up with. This is all outrageous and it’s draining and exhausting. It’s difficult to deal right now with my twin threats of a dead ac evaporator coil in 90 degree weather and what looks like termites that have moved into the water heater shack. Where am I supposed to get money and time and patience for any of this? I ‘m anxious and stressed and depressed. Certainly, no help is coming from the US Senate under Mitch McConnell. From CNBC “‘We will lose everything:’ Americans express frustration at Congress adjourning without a stimulus deal.”
Though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said members will return to vote if a deal is reached, that could still be weeks away, CNBC reported. In the meantime, around 28 million Americans are currently collecting jobless benefits, and as many as 40 million could face eviction if Congress does not pass a relief bill soon, according to Emily Benfer, a housing expert.
Hundreds of readers — from all over the country and across the political spectrum — wrote into CNBC Make It to detail how the Senate’s failure to pass another aid package is affecting them and their families. Many expressed outrage at Congress’s inaction. Others simply wanted to vent to someone about their situation, they said.
“When I saw them ignore the desperate need for a new stimulus for almost two months, I was stunned,” Hugh Wasson, 66, writes to CNBC Make It. Wasson is currently unable to find work, and lives off of his Social Security payments and jobless benefits from Florida, which do not cover all of his bills. “I am still unable to believe anyone could be so callous, let alone a whole roomful of them.”
Here’s how seven other unemployed Americans across the country are faring.
Before Covid-19, Jane, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym for privacy purposes, made a good living as a waitress in Southern Indiana, taking home around $600 to $800 per week. Now, with her restaurant still closed, she receives $141 per week, after taxes, in state jobless benefits.
With so little money, her rent, electric and cable bills have gone unpaid this month, and she has let her car and rental insurance policies lapse. Waiting for Congress to do something, she says, has turned her into “a ball of stress.”
“Literally the only thing[s] I think about [are] money, bills, money, debt, food,” she says. “I wake up thinking about these things, and I go to bed, struggling to fall asleep, thinking about these things.”
The 33-year-old has been working since she was 15, she says, and this is the longest period of time she’s been without a job. She says that if any member of Congress were in her place — unsure of how’d they’d pay rent or be able to buy groceries — they’d come to a deal fast.
“I get that [Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi] wants $600 extended benefits, I’d love that, when I was getting that I was able to keep up with all of my bills,” she says. “But at this point, I’d take anything.”
So, let me return to Shapiro. Of all the things on his list, this tugged at me. What do we do with this mad, lawless man once we extricate him?
Once in office, Biden will immediately confront a legal question that has only a single precedent in American history: How does an incoming president handle his immediate predecessor’s suspected abuse of office? Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon—although it helped end the national nightmare—was unpopular at the time and precluded any trial. But Nixon as president did not shield his underlings from federal investigation, which is why there was enough evidence early in Ford’s presidency to convict former Attorney General John Mitchell and former top White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman of illegally covering up the Watergate break-in and the broader scandals surrounding it
There will be a political argument that going after Trump after he slinks out of the White House will only add to national divisions. But if you can’t prosecute a lawless president when he is in office and it is in bad taste to prosecute him after he has left office, about the only remaining legal option would be to prosecute him for thought crimes before he takes office
I’m still thinking on this.
Anyway, it’s getting very hot in my room. I did go out to buy a small window unit to keep the back and center part of the house cooler. It wasn’t something really on the budget but it was 93 yesterday and it’s hard to function in that kind of heat.
I hope you are safe and able to stay someplace to stay that way. We have to find a way to vote and fight this despite our individual and shared exhaustion. They want us that way. It’s what autocratic wannabes do so we just give in and go along.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads: Neither Snow nor Rain … But can a Greedy Pair of Sociopaths stop the Mail?
Posted: August 14, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, morning reads | Tags: election interfence, US Postal Service 15 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
The sabotage of the US Postal Service by the Trumpist Regime is just another one of those things that’s beyond the pale! The Republicans have always wanted to privatize the constitutionally mandated service which always confused me because their rural constituents would likely be without delivery. I mean, that’s why it was mandated in the constitution to begin with so all citizens everywhere get their mail. Any poor rural citizen wouldn’t get service or would pay a tremendous amount of money for it.
No one could possibly make a profit out of a delivery service without completely cherrypicking who gets routes and who doesn’t and that’s basically what we economists call a market friction that implies a public service if it’s a necessity. You provide it or heavily subsidize some other entity to do it because a huge portion of the business is not ever going to turn a profit without getting rid of the unprofitable parts. I have no idea how this simple Economics 101 explanation never seems to get through to them. Trying to force a market model onto a situation like that basically means depriving people of the service. But, this attack is not the usual Republican trype. It’s another example of Donald Trump’s favorite past time; election interference.
Why Susan Collins was so riled about this eventually (cough, cough) she sent a letter!
The worst instances of the mess up is the amount of necessary prescriptions that are not getting to people but especially to veterans and active service members who use the VA system for health care. Of course, this is just to mess up any voting by mail. Trump just announced his evil intent directly yesterday in a presser. But, hell what’s bad for the rest of us is just fine for Donald Trump who has invented the bugbear “universal voting by mail” to describe a bunch of different ways of getting your ballot to the election counting offices. But, per the NYT: 2020 Election Live Updates: Trump Requests Mail-In Ballot Even as He Assails Voting by Mail.” Fortunately we also have Judges getting orders out trying to stops this while the senate just took it’s labor day holiday for an entire month which also has horrible ramifications for any relief from the Trumpist Pandemic and Economic recession..
With President Trump and congressional Democrats fighting over funding the Postal Service, many states — and politicians up for re-election this fall — are grappling with the uncertainty around the expansion of mail-in balloting prompted by the pandemic.
Some key developments in the last 24 hours:
A federal judge in Pittsburgh ordered the Trump campaign to produce proof of voter fraud claims. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan on Thursday ordered Republicans who have challenged Pennsylvania’s expansion of mail-in voting to turn over evidence by the end of today that the system has led to ballot irregularities or face the possible dismissal of their suit.
The state Democratic Party and the Sierra Club, which intervened in the case, requested that the plaintiffs — the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and Pennsylvania’s Republican Party — turn over specific evidence of fraud, after the Republicans claimed the changes provided “fraudsters an easy opportunity to engage in ballot harvesting” and other manipulations.
“Plaintiffs shall produce such evidence in their possession, and if they have none, state as much,” wrote Mr. Ranjan, a Trump appointee.
Postal Service warns Pennsylvania on deadlines. In a separate Pennsylvania lawsuit, the general counsel of the Postal Service sent a stark warning to state officials late last month over their last-minute attempt expand voting by mail, according to documents released on Thursday.
Thomas J. Marshall, the counsel, wrote in a letter to Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, Kathy Boockvar, whose department oversees elections, that some mail ballots might not be delivered on time because the state’s pre-existing deadlines for sending out ballots were too tight for its “delivery standards,” The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
In response, Pennsylvania officials petitioned the State Supreme Court to extend the deadlines.
You may also read about brave and bold Susan Collins there. (Do you see my tongue in my check?}
A USA Today Op Ed puts it bluntly: “Trump is determined to rig this election, defraud voters and thwart the will of the people. We need bipartisan election observers to ensure fairness and transparency, and all of us must report abuses in real time if we see them at the polls.” This was written by David Rothkopf and Bernard L. Schwartz.
We can no longer trust that our federal government will oversee fair elections this November. The repeated statements and actions of the president, his attorney general and leaders in the Republican Party have demonstrated that not only will they seek to cheat to ensure their “victory,” they will do so in multiple ways as part of a massive, systematic effort to defraud the American people and undermine our democracy.
The time has come for those of us who seek to protect and preserve democracy in America to step up. We must commit ourselves to ensuring the results of these elections represent the will of the people. And since we can’t trust the government to protect our elections, that means we must organize independent efforts to do so now.
Our efforts should begin with a statement from our four living past presidents identifying the threat, underscoring that it is real, condemning it and announcing their support for an extraordinary national effort to ensure we have the fair elections our people deserve. The threat we face is so great, it requires this kind of show of resolve and unity from past national leaders to protect what is at risk and to commit themselves to putting their considerable political weight behind identifying, opposing and undoing efforts by the president and his allies to rig the elections or muddle the results.
There are some excellent suggestions beyond this and it’s a short read.
And a Trumpist regime attack on the government would not be complete without a side deal. This is from CNBC: “Sen. Elizabeth Warren demands ‘corruption’ probe after report of Amazon options purchase by Postal Service chief Louis DeJoy” as reported by Dan Mangan. The Post Master General just put a side bet via Options on Amazon–one of Trump’s other Bugbears– and used to be a large holder of UPS stock.
A USPS spokesman, when asked for comment about Warren’s tweet, in an email reply pointed to a statement issued by DeJoy last week.
“I take my ethical obligations seriously, and I have done what is necessary to ensure that I am and will remain in compliance with those obligations,” DeJoy said in that statement.”
Warren’s tweet linked to a CNN report on Wednesday, which said that DeJoy continues to hold at least at least $30 million in holdings in his former company XPO Logistics, which is a United States Postal Service contractor.
CNN reported that those holdings likely created “a major conflict of interest, according to newly obtained financial disclosures and ethics experts,” who the news site said “were shocked that ethics officials at the postal service approved this arrangement.”
CNN, citing government financial disclosures, also reported that on the same day in June that “DeJoy divested large amounts of Amazon shares, he purchased stock options giving him the right to buy new shares of Amazon at a price much lower than their current market price.”
“This could lead to a separate conflict, given President Donald Trump’s disdain for Amazon, and his reported effort in 2018 to pressure DeJoy’s predecessor to raise prices on Amazon and other firms, while complaining about its founder Jeff Bezos,” CNN noted.
DeJoy, who previously worked as chairman and CEO of New Breed Logistics, a company that had contracted with the U.S. Postal Service, was selected as Postmaster General in May by the USPS’s board of governors. DeJoy before his selection also had been a major Republican Party fundraiser.
In June, The Washington Post had reported that “DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, the ambassador-nominee to Canada, have between $30.1 million and $75.3 million in assets in USPS competitors or contractors, according to Wos’s financial disclosure paperwork filed with the Office of Government Ethics.”
The Post noted that the “vast majority” of those holdings were in XPO Logistics, which acquired New Breed Logistics in 2014.
But the couple’s “combined stake in competitors UPS and trucking company J.B. Hunt is roughly $265,000.”
CNN’s article on Wednesday said that records show that “DeJoy owned between $265,000 and $550,000 in UPS stock, but divested them after becoming postmaster general.”
This is a complete lie or a sign of just one more individual unsuited for his job in the Trumpist Regime. Who couldn’t have seen some of this happen if you actually asked a few people that do this job for a living and not a political payback? Unintended Consequences my fat old lady ass!
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy acknowledged to United States Postal Service employees this week that recent procedural changes have had “unintended consequences,” but described them as necessary.
“Unfortunately, this transformative initiative has had unintended consequences that impacted our overall service levels,” DeJoy wrote in a memo sent this week and obtained by CNN.
However, recent changes are not the only contributing factors. Over the years we have grown undisciplined in our mail and package processing schedules, causing an increase in delayed mail between processing facilities and delivery units.”
As he faces mounting criticism for changes that have slowed delivery and capacity ahead of the November election, DeJoy also claimed in the letter the policy moves would increase “performance for the election and upcoming peak season and maintain the high level of public trust we have earned for dedication and commitment to our customers throughout our history.”
He even has the audacity to use the royal “we” here. Well, “we” know he’s never walked a route or sorted mail.
Vice has this “Internal USPS Documents Outline Plans to Hobble Mail Sorting. ‘This will slow mail processing,’ a union official wrote on one of the documents announcing the machine removals.”
The United States Postal Service proposed removing 20 percent of letter sorting machines it uses around the country before revising the plan weeks later to closer to 15 percent of all machines, meaning 502 will be taken out of service, according to documents obtained by Motherboard outlining the agency’s plans. USPS workers told Motherboard this will slow their ability to sort mail.
One of the documents also suggests these changes were in the works before Louis DeJoy, a top Trump donor and Republican fundraiser, became postmaster general, because it is dated May 15, a month before DeJoy assumed office and only nine days after the Board of Governors announced his selection.
The title of the presentation, as well as language used in the notice to union officials, undermines the Postal Service’s narrative that the organization is simply “mov[ing] equipment around its network” to optimize processing, as spokesperson Dave Partenheimer told Motherboard on Thursday. The May document clearly calls the initiative an “equipment reduction.” It makes no mention of the machines being moved to other facilities. And the notice to union officials repeatedly uses the same phrase. Multiple sources within the postal service told Motherboard they have personally witnessed the machines, which cost millions of dollars, being destroyed or thrown in the dumpster. USPS did not respond to a request for comment.
In May, the USPS planned to remove a total of 969 sorting machines out of the 4,926 it had in operation as of February for all types of letters and flat mail. The vast majority of them—746 out of 3,765 in use—were delivery bar code sorters (DBCS), the type that sort letters, postcards, ballots, marketing mail and other similarly sized pieces. But a subsequent document distributed to union officials in mid-June said 502 of those machines would be removed from facilities.
The May document, titled “Equipment Reduction,” breaks down the exact number of machines the USPS slated to remove by region and facility. Although the document uses terms like “proposed reduction” and “reduction plan” and does not reflect the USPS’s final plan, it provides a general picture of the sweeping changes previously reported by Motherboard about mail sorting machines being removed around the country. It also shows that USPS management is undertaking a broad reduction of the agency’s ability to sort and process all types of mail, except for packages which have been steadily increasing in recent years before booming during the pandemic.
Thankfully, an Inspector General is looking in to this and hopefully, won’t be thwarted by the Trumpists.
Anyway, we need stay on top of this as well as the other election shenanigans.
What’s on your reading and blogging list?
Friday Reads: Even First Ladies Get the Blues
Posted: August 7, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, morning reads | Tags: even first ladies get the blues, What fresh hell is this 20 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I continue to wake and wonder what fresh hell awaits us today. There’s a lot of it but I’m finding some comfort in Michelle Obama’s openness about her mild depression in her new podcasts. I would really like to return to the day and age where there was less yelling and incoherent sentences and a lot more humanly shared experience. Empathetic people get the blues while witnessing human suffering. This is from E.
The former first lady spurred concern from supporters this week after mentioning in a new episode of her eponymous podcast that she is “dealing with some form of low-grade depression” as a result of these historic times.
However, a day later, she addressed the worry about her head on with a message directly to fans via social media. “I just wanted to check in with you all because a lot of you have been checking in on me after hearing this week’s podcast. First things first—I’m doing just fine,” she assured on Instagram. “There’s no reason to worry about me.”
As Obama elaborated, her concern is with frontline workers, Black Lives Matter activists and families making decisions about school amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“Like I said in that conversation with @Michele__Norris, I’m thinking about the folks out there risking themselves for the rest of us—the doctors and nurses and essential workers of all kinds,” she explained. “I’m thinking about the teachers and students and parents who are just trying to figure out school for the fall. I’m thinking about the people out there protesting and organizing for a little more justice in our country.”
Obama also took a moment to comfort anyone who is struggling with how things are presently—because times are indeed hard.
“The idea that what this country is going through shouldn’t have any effect on us—that we all should just feel OK all the time—that just doesn’t feel real to me,” she wrote. “So I hope you all are allowing yourselves to feel whatever it is you’re feeling.”
“I hope you’re listening to yourselves and taking a moment to reflect on everything that’s coming at us,” Obama encouraged, “and what you might be able to do about it.”
As the public figure concluded, Obama left readers with one last suggestion. “And to all of you who’ve reached out—thank you,” she said. “I hope you’re also reaching out to all those you’re closest with, not just with a text, but maybe with a call or a video chat. Don’t be afraid to offer them a shoulder to lean on, or to ask for one yourself. Love you all.”
These are the words in her podcast that drew strong empathy from me.
“These are not…fulfilling times spiritually, so I know that I am dealing with some form of low-grade depression,” she shared, “not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife and just seeing this administration, watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out, is dispiriting. So, I’ve had to kind of give myself that—those days, those moments.”
I keep saying it but these are wretched times. Nothing feels normal about any of this. Susan Glasser–writing for the New Yorker–describes this President’s lack of vision and priorities. Clearly, he’s interested in only ego stroking attention and grifting. Actually doing his job or thinking about it isn’t particularly interesting to him. His short attention span and inability to think outside of his visceral needs shows how uniquely unsuitable he is for his job.
It was not supposed to be a trick question, or even all that tricky. For any other candidate, it would have been the softest of softballs, the slowest of pitches. But when the Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt asked Donald Trump the other morning, “Mr. President, what is your second-term agenda? What are your top priorities?,” his inability to answer was one of the most revealing moments of his reëlection campaign so far. “I want to take where we left,” Trump said. “We were better than we were ever,” he added, wistfully conjuring the booming pre-pandemic America of his fantasies, where everybody had a job and the stock market was great. Facing uncontrolled death from the coronavirus and an economy that is cratering because of it, Trump is desperate for a do-over. Other than that, he had pretty much nothing to say about why he should be elected to a second term, although he took more than three hundred words to say it. The bottom line seemed to be that Trump is promising four more years of “jobs” and of stopping U.S. allies, especially Germany, from “ripping us off.” And that’s it.
This painful exchange, which even the Fox hosts eventually cut off, after a few cringe-inducing minutes, was little noted among the many whoppers, distortions, and outrages offered up by Trump this week. It wasn’t even the big news out of that particular Fox interview, the coverage of which rightfully focussed on the President’s absurd claims that the coronavirus is just “going away” and that schools should reopen because children are “almost immune” to covid-19. Throughout the week, Trump’s near-delusional state about the pandemic has been on awkward display, most notably in his instant classic of an interview with the Axios journalist Jonathan Swan, whose simple but skeptical queries about the virus revealed a President unable to comprehend basic facts about the public-health crisis or devise a national plan for combatting it. “It is what it is,” Trump told Swan, when asked about the large, and growing, American death toll—a line that may well go down as one of his most chillingly callous.
But Trump’s struggle to answer such an important and straightforward question about what he would do in a second term should not be overlooked, because it goes to the heart of why his campaign— and the country that he nominally governs—is in such trouble. As an incumbent, Trump is certainly in a bind: he can hardly campaign on his record, when the United States is in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and close to a hundred and sixty thousand Americans are dead of the coronavirus. There’s only so much blame that Trump can deflect; this is a catastrophe that happened on his watch, and—no matter how many times he calls it the “China virus” or warns Americans that Joe Biden will turn the country into a godless hellscape—he knows it.
Trump’s vapid answer is more than a reflection of a political-messaging dilemma—it’s a sign of decline, both in terms of the President’s ability to respond cogently to a simple query and as a warning for American democracy, given that such a large segment of the electorate apparently finds it acceptable to support a leader whose only campaign selling point is himself. Is Trump’s inability to come up with something to say about the next four years a reflection of the fact that even he thinks he is going to lose? Perhaps, but it’s also a measure of how far Trump has descended into full “l’état, c’est moi”-ism. Running for reëlection without offering even a hint of a program is a sure indicator of at least aspirational authoritarianism.
Still, watching polls and interviews with former Hair Furor devotees does give me hope that we my eventually be rid of him. This is from Prevail: “The Great Escape: Donald John Trump’s Exit Strategy. Where does the President go from here?” It’s written by Greg Olear.
A thousand Americans are dying of the novel coronavirus every day. Volume Five of the Senate Intelligence Committee Report is due for release any day now. Senators, Congressmen, and emeritus members of the intelligence community have stopped pulling punches and are sounding the alarms. Cy Vance announced that his investigation is wider than originally thought, and likely includes tax fraud; the New York Times reported that Deutsche Bank has already turned over Trump’s financial documents to prosecutors. The vaunted economy is falling along with the president’s poll numbers. And the presumptive guy in charge gave the most unflattering interview of all time ever, unequivocally exposing himself as a complete and total moron:
Even the Trump people know they can’t win the election without banana-republic-level fuckery, as the indefatigable historian Heather Cox Richardson writes:
No one is pretending that Trump is going to win the popular vote. He’s not even trying to. He’s doubling down on the culture wars that excite his base in the hopes of getting them to turn out in strong numbers, most recently by sending federal law enforcement officers into cities led by Democrats in order to create images of what looks like rioting, to enable him to set himself up as defending “law and order.”
At the same time, he and his supporters in the Republican Party are working to guarantee an undercount of votes for his opponent by attacking mail-in voting, shutting down polling places, kicking people off voter rolls, undercutting the United States Postal Service, and even, perhaps, by permitting a wave of evictions that will make it significantly harder for displaced people to vote.
It is notable that, as a country, we are not talking about policies or winning majorities. We are talking about how Trump can win by gaming the Electoral College, or by cheating.
Even so, enthusiasm for cheating to keep a low-IQ mobster in office seems to be on the wane, even among Republicans, who must be sick of the guy. There have been many cracks in the facade these last few weeks. Sure, Bill Barr is boss at torpedoing investigations, but he can only do so much—and as Lincoln’s Bible pointed out during his embarrassing House hearing, the AG is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is:
(Sidenote: Being not nearly as smart as one thinks one is is the prevailing character trait of everyone involved with this White House. Other than, you know, pure uncut greed).
So, like, now what? Where does Trump go from here?
We’ll know more by the end of the month. The Republican National Convention is scheduled for August 24-27. Whether it’s in Charlotte, Jacksonville, the South Lawn of the White House (illegally, but whatevs), or the back nine of Bedminster, that’s the moment when Republicans will certify the Trump/Pence ticket—or not certify it.
The Republican National Committee, chaired by the ever-mendacious Ronna Romney McDaniel, decided to eschew a proper primary process, likely fearing that some dark horse candidate, perhaps Ronna’s own Uncle Mitt, would prevail. Last week came the curious report that the convention would be closed to the press. While that original announcement has been walked back, it brought up the obvious question: Why would the RNC opt to go dark at the precise moment when it should want every TV channel in the country broadcasting its propaganda program?
This question is answered by the Corona Virus epidemic Trump enabled and created through out the country. Go read the entire biting essay. Oh, and my answer to his question is this: Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not Collect $200.
Emily Stewart of Vox tries to understand antimaskers by letting them explain themselves. Yes, it’s that basket of deplorables again.
In recent weeks, I spoke with nearly a dozen people who consider themselves anti-mask to find out just that. What I discovered is that there is certainly a broad spectrum of reasons — some find wearing a mask annoying or just aren’t convinced they work, and others have gone down a rabbit hole of conspiracies that often involve vaccines, Big Pharma, YouTube, and Bill Gates. One man told me he wears a mask when he goes to the store to be polite. A woman got kicked out of a Menards store for refusing to wear a mask amid what she calls the “Covid scam garbage.”
But there are also many commonalities. Most people I talked to noted government officials’ confusing messaging on masks in the pandemic’s early days. They insist that they’re not conspiracy theorists and that they don’t believe the coronavirus is a hoax, but many also expressed doubts about the growing body of scientific knowledge around the virus, opting for cherry-picked and unverified sources of information found on social media rather than traditional news sources. They often said they weren’t political but acknowledged they leaned right.
Most claimed not to know anyone who had contracted Covid-19 or died of it, and when I told them I did, the responses were the same: How old were they? Did they have preexisting conditions? They know their position is unpopular, and most spoke on condition of anonymity and will be referred to only by their first names. Amy told me people are “not very nice about this.”
The mask debate is complex. As much as it’s about science, health, and risk, it’s also about empathy. If someone doesn’t personally know anyone who died from Covid-19, does it mean those lives don’t matter? Are older and immunocompromised people disposable? Does one person’s right to ignore public health advice really trump someone else’s right to live?
“Death is happening in these wards where even family members can’t visit their loved ones when they’re sick with Covid, so the death and the severity of this disease are really invisible to the public,” said Kumi Smith, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota who studies infectious diseases.
It leads some people to brush the issue aside.
So, again, I empathize with Michelle Obama and know exactly where she’s at since I’ve struggled with this ever since Trump took office and fucked the country over royally.
Today’s art is from Picasso’s blue period. That would be 1901-1904.
And here’s some Blues.
Be Kind and gentle yourselves and others. Try to relax and stay in the moment and do what you love to do. Check in we love you and worry about you.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
TGIF Reads
Posted: July 10, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, morning reads | Tags: Charles Burchfield, QAnonsense, Trump, White Christian Nationalism 13 Comments
Charles Burchfield, “July Sunlight Pouring Down”, 1952, Watercolor on paper
Good Day
Sky Dancers!
Today’s art is from Charles Burchfield whose ethereal water colors of nature have always had a calming effect on me. Water color is my favorite medium and I love painting landscapes and old buildings. I always find his play of light to be fascinating. That’s hard to do with water color. You get one chance at it.
According to Burchfield’s friend and colleague Edward Hopper, “The work of Charles Burchfield is most decidedly founded, not on art, but on life, and the life that he knows and loves best.”
Those times were not simpler for most folks. There are always plagues and famines and wars. However, this is the first time we look at Americana from the viewpoint of living through a nightmare of a leader who is not the least bit suited for the job a minority of the population shove him into. I cannot wait to be rid of him one way or another and whatever gets him out of our lives quickly.
Polls continue to show the displeasure is not limited to us. This is from Politico: “Poll shows Trump’s coronavirus approval at all-time low. The president remains reluctant to acknowledge the disease’s threat as he keeps pushing to restart the U.S. economy.”
Support for President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has hit an all-time low, according to a new survey, with a similarly substantial majority of Americans also disapproving of his response to widespread racial unrest.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Friday reports that a record 67 percent of respondents now disapprove of “the way Donald Trump is handling the response to the coronavirus,” while only 33 percent approve — the widest gulf in public sentiment since ABC News and Ipsos started surveying on the pandemic in March.
Dawn of Spring, ca. 1960s. Watercolor, charcoal, and white chalk on joined paper mounted on board,
It’s still disheartening that fully 1/3 of those respondents appear to be adherents to the kind of white christian nationalism that brands the Trumpist regime and supporters into the KKK corner of life. What’s also disheartening is that the kind of blatantly fictional conspiracy theories and fairy tales embraced by these people seems to be still selling in some corners that send representatives to Congress. This is from Media Matters: “QAnon may be coming to Congress, and journalists need to be ready”. This article describes the odd views of ““Gun-toting” restaurateur Lauren Boebert who beat an incumbent Republican in the Colorado primary.
In many ways, Boebert and other QAnon-following candidates have been normalized in the press. FiveThirtyEight published an article about the likelihood that Republican women will increase their representation in Congress with the November elections, and used a photo of Boebert. Her fringe beliefs are not mentioned anywhere in the article or accompanying tweet.
When The New York Times wrote about Boebert’s victory, it made a passing reference to her support of QAnon, saying in the lead that she’d “spoken approvingly of the pro-Trump conspiracy theory QAnon.” It wasn’t until the 11th paragraph that the movement got mentioned again, and even that was framed in the context of how “Democrats immediately went on the attack” for her support of QAnon.
Media Matters’ Alex Kaplan has reported extensively on the QAnon movement, and he has identified two concepts that journalists need to understand when reporting on this movement. The first has to do with QAnon-supporting candidates and the need to probe their actual beliefs. “Some of these candidates seem to see QAnon and its supporters as an explicit political constituency to appeal to for support, and are trying to use existing QAnon infrastructure to do so, such as using QAnon hashtags (particularly #WWG1WGA) and going on QAnon YouTube channels,” he says. “So they seem to be treating a far-right conspiracy theory group tied to violence and flagged by the FBI as some normal voting block when it’s clearly not.”
The second issue is that reporters often seem unaware of, or aren’t reporting on, the actual number of QAnon-supporting candidates who are progressing in their races. Kaplan says, “I keep seeing just a few specific candidates mentioned over and over regarding those who made it out of primaries or to primary runoffs (Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jo Rae Perkins), when it’s way more than that; it’s at least 14 candidates that made it out of primaries to the ballot in November or to primary runoffs (and that’s leaving out independent/write-in candidates).”
Charles Burchfield, “Purple Vetch and Buttercups”, 1959, Watercolor over charcoal,
This shows you exactly how far Trump thinks he can go unchecked. Via CNN: “Trump implies he’s ready to grant clemency to Roger Stone”.
Trump is widely expected to pardon or commute Stone’s sentence, according to at least half a dozen sources close to the President.
>Asked by Fox News host Sean Hannity whether he’s considered a pardon or commutation for Stone, Trump said during a phone interview, “I am always thinking.”
“You’ll be watching like everyone else in this case,” he said.
In another interview, with radio host Howie Carr, Trump decried Stone’s treatment at the hands of law enforcement and said he may grant his clemency plea.
“He was framed. He was treated horrible. He was treated so badly,” Trump said.
Probably the most heinous thing Trump is doing right now is turning America’s school children into political props for his culture war. This is an Op Ed by Michelle Goldberg writing at the NYT: “Trump Threatens to Turn Pandemic Schooling Into a Culture War. The president might sabotage parents’ best hopes for getting their kids back to school.”
Instead, Donald Trump has approached the extraordinarily complex challenge of educating children during a pandemic just as he’s approached most other matters of governing: with bullying, bluster and propaganda.
While doing nothing to curb the wildfire spread of the coronavirus, he has demanded that schools reopen and threatened to cut off funding for those that don’t. On Wednesday, he tweeted that the guidelines for reopening schools from his own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were “very tough & expensive,” adding, “I will be meeting with them!!!” Mike Pence then suggested that the guidelines would be revised. On Thursday the agency’s director, Dr. Robert Redfield, said they wouldn’t be, but later, seeming to give into pressure, said the guidelines should be seen as recommendations, not requirements.
Also on Thursday, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos gestured toward a plan of coronavirus-inspired school choice that would punish public schools that don’t fully reopen. Without offering details, she said families could take the federal money spent at these schools and use it elsewhere. She’s long wanted to give public money to private schools; perhaps she thinks this coronavirus has given her the chance.
https://twitter.com/WaltTheStalt/status/1281423022906384385
Check out New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi’s piece “The Unburdened Believer”. There’s a lot of creepy here.
Trump’s central case for reelection — the strong economy — has evaporated faster than the tear gas the administration sprayed on peaceful demonstrators outside the White House in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 130,000 Americans and counting, and the shutdowns have left millions out of work. Trump publicly worked through his grief in phases: denial, semi-acceptance, promotion of bad medical advice, denial once again, then promotion of overly rosy recovery projections. Meanwhile, he has responded to the nationwide civil unrest that erupted after Floyd’s killing by circulating far-right conspiracies, calling for more violence, defending iconic losers of the Confederacy, sharing a video in which one of his supporters shouted “White power!,” and attempting halfheartedly to cast Biden as a far-left extremist.
Trump has struggled to offer his campaign a message behind which to organize. For Trump, this would never mean formulating a case to prove that voters are better off now than they were four years ago or something similarly normal. It would mean coming up with an effective way to bully his opponent. In the 2016 Republican primary, this meant Lyin’ Ted and Little Marco and Low Energy Jeb(!). In the general, it meant Crooked Hillary and the Fake News media vs. the Deplorables. In 2020, “Sleepy Joe” hasn’t quite caught on. Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary who now hosts some kind of low-rent faux Fox News program on a D-list far-right cable channel, recently talked about this with Dick Morris. The issue with Trump’s “sleepy” message is that sleepy might sound pretty appealing to some voters right now, fatigued by the chaos of the Trump years. On Fox News, Ari Fleischer, a White House spokesman under George W. Bush, and Matt Schlapp, a Trump-campaign surrogate, had a conversation about the issue, too. They agreed that “sleepy” wasn’t working, that the president needed to go back to the drawing board and focus on something else. Kellyanne Conway has suggested that the campaign’s focus on Biden as senile and losing it might put off older voters. These allies of the president are offering campaign-strategy notes in public, on television, because that’s how you get through to him.
And so in walks Hogan Gidley, the new spokesman for the reelection effort — a job that recently belonged to Kayleigh McEnany, who in April became Gidley’s boss when she was named White House press secretary. In a normal White House, the position would’ve gone to Gidley. The ambition of any deputy, after all, is to replace the principal under which the deputy serves. Gidley has served under three press secretaries: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham, and now McEnany. (So much for the patriarchy!)
Gidley, now 43, arrived at the White House as a supporting character in the volatile second season. A onetime broadcast-journalism major at Ole Miss and a student of political media, he ended up reporting on Mike Huckabee for a TV station in Little Rock, Arkansas, before defecting to the dark side to join the then-governor’s staff. “He’s got professional integrity. He will never do something that is wrong or immoral,” Huckabee told New York. “But, at the same time, he’s a person that, if he takes a check from someone in a job, he’s gonna be loyal to that person.” In the next breath, Huckabee addressed the question that hangs over any human shield for this president. “If it ever gets to where he can’t, then maybe he’ll find something else. But he’s not gonna go out and burn his bridges.”
When Mike’s daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, replaced Sean Spicer as press secretary, she brought along her “big brother” Hogan as a special assistant to the president. In the very West Wing that inspired a tell-all book called Team of Vipers, he’s distinguished himself as “a golden retriever,” “a great teammate,” and “a really sweet person,” in terms that were repeated by more than half a dozen current and former White House staffers who spoke to New York. Across the board, but never on the record, Gidley’s colleagues described him as a nonthreatening force for good, for making things run a tiny bit smoother in what can charitably be described as the very definition of a hostile work environment — a happy-to-be-here functionary who keeps things light and in perspective. However, these qualities can sometimes read more like haplessness than virtue.
Sun and Rocks, 1918-50. Watercolor and gouache on paper,
I would really like a nice quiet weekend but I imagine I’m going to start hearing the sound of perpetual sirens. Any one who knows me heard me say I am not going anywhere until at least two weeks after 4th of July because I want to see what Memorial Day and the 4th drag into town with all this reopening stupidity. Well, it reignited our Covid -19 upward trend. So, ask me again when we get a few weeks after Labor Day. I’m staying my fat ass home.
This is from NPR News Baton Rouge.
Louisiana is now one of the leading states in the nation for most new coronavirus cases.
It ranks third in the U.S. this week for most new cases per capita on a rolling seven-day average, according to new data from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It’s a trajectory that could spark another shutdown.
…
Louisiana’s jump to the top of the list for most new coronavirus cases cannot be explained by increased testing. Hospitalizations grew by more than 50 percent over the last two weeks, and the percentage of positive tests in the state has also been rising. On Thursday the latter rate hit 12 percent positive — over the 10 percent threshold set by the state for safe opening in Phase 2. The 7-day rolling average is 8.7 percent, according to AH Datalyitcs.
But that could already be too high. The World Health Organization’s recommended goal is 5 percent. A high positivity rate indicates that the virus’s spread is too great for contact tracing to work — and that’s assuming contact tracing is actually being broadly embraced by the public, which hasn’t been the case in Louisiana.
Dr. Vin Gupta, an assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Washington, is among the medical experts warning that contact tracing is now useless across much of the U.S. because the virus has already spread too widely.
On Wednesday, Gov. John Bel Edwards said the state has “lost all the gains made in June” and is “now seeing some numbers that rival our peak back in April.”
And while Texas, Florida and Arizona are seeing higher increases in hospitalizations, Dr. Thomas Tsai, a surgeon and assistant professor at Harvard’s School of Public Health, said it could be a matter of time.
“My worry is that Louisiana may just be a few weeks behind Texas and Arizona and Florida, unless more concerted efforts are taken,” he said.
It’s unclear whether there’s public appetite for that — or even to abide by the guidelines already in place. Health officials say that as the state reopened — too many people have ignored public health guidelines, particularly around wearing masks and keeping distance. Bars in particular have become a key source of outbreaks.
“Frankly, it’s been really, really frustrating. Because just a few weeks ago, we were in a really, pretty good place,” said Suan Hassig, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Tulane University.
“The curve is going to bounce back up if we don’t keep jumping on it and stomping it down.”
I’m no epidemiologist but frankly, I knew opening the damned bars would send us into a spike. The mayor backed off a little and put some size limits but we still have indoor eating, Short term Rentals, and open bars although you can’t drink at the bar. They’ve put them outside which is highly unpleasant in a neighbor even at the best of times.
And we have this too look forward to! Climate change hoax again … right?
So, I hope it’s going better where you are. Keep letting us know you’re safe! If you’d like to see the Whitney Showing of Burchfield: Heat Waves in a Swamp please go to this page and enjoy a teaching led tour!.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Monday Reads: The Failure of Trumpism
Posted: June 22, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, corruption, just because 10 Comments
Good Day
Sky Dancers!
The resplendent chaos of the Trumpist Regime appears to include chickens coming home to roost. Yes, the Bolton Book is out. But did that really tell us much about the goings on that we didn’t at least suspect? I didn’t have begging and whining to China on my bingo card but it certainly is basically his M.O. for his reelection strategy.
Bolton has all kinds of interviews out there and now he opines hope that Trump will be term limited by voters.
This is from the ABC interview yesterday:
President Donald Trump‘s longest-serving national security adviser John Bolton condemned his presidency as dangerously damaging to the United States and argued the 2020 election is the last “guardrail” to protect the country from him.
In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Bolton offered a brutal indictment of his former boss, saying, “I hope (history) will remember him as a one-term president who didn’t plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can’t recall from. We can get over one term — I have absolute confidence, even if it’s not the miracle of a conservative Republican being elected in November. Two terms, I’m more troubled about.”
In the interview with ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz and in his new book, “The Room Where It Happened,” Bolton paints Trump as “stunningly uninformed,” making “erratic” and “irrational” decisions, unable to separate his personal and political interests from the country’s, and marked and manipulated by foreign adversaries.
Yeah, it just continues. That’s about it. And then, there’s the clean up man who supposedly is the chief agent of justice in the country. The massive failure of the Tulsa CoronaViruspalooza is only upstaged by the massive failure of Barr to disassemble the Southern District of New York’s investigations of so many Trumpist cronies, relatives, and Trump himself.
This NY Op Ed was written by Preet Bharara a former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York: “The Wrong Justice Department Official Lost His Job This Weekend. The attorney general, Bill Barr, undermined the rule of law by forcing out Geoffrey Berman, the United States attorney in Manhattan.”
Trump’s latest domestic political errand involves the office I led for almost eight years — the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, commonly known as S.D.N.Y., a place where politics is supposed to be off limits. The United States Attorney Geoffrey Berman was fired on Saturday in a manner and under circumstances that warrant criticism and scrutiny.
To understand the uproar over the termination in legal circles, some context helps. S.D.N.Y. is famously and proudly independent. It embraces its nickname, the “Sovereign District of New York,” as a badge of honor. Sovereign, in the understanding of those who have served there, does not mean rogue. It signifies respect for law and scorn for political considerations. Republicans and Democrats are equally in the cross hairs.
The career lawyers are hired without knowledge of their politics or ideology. Mary Jo White, the U.S. attorney who hired me to be a prosecutor, opened an investigation of Bill Clinton, the president who appointed her, after he pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich. Such independent action would seem beyond this president’s comprehension.
That same commitment to independence is why I did not return President Trump’s unusual phone call to me in March 2017, after which he fired me.
The importance of reputational independence isn’t codified in a rule or a statute, but it is rightly embedded in the D.N.A. of any worthy law enforcement institution for a simple reason: That independence gives comfort to the public that decisions about life and liberty will not be influenced by politics or partisan interests, that those decisions will not depend on an individual’s identity, wealth, fame, power or closeness to a president — every judgment rendered without fear or favor, as the oath commands.
It is this independence, and the public’s faith therein, that Attorney General Bill Barr, in cahoots with President Trump, threatened with his dubious, if legal, removal of Mr. Berman.
The Daily Beast’s Asha Rangappa argues Barr should be impeached.
We’re now on *checks notes* plan D. This would involve the House Judiciary Committee conducting its own oversight investigation into Barr’s conduct and issuing him a subpoena to testify. As we know, however, this administration is fond of ignoring subpoenas, and there is no reason to believe that Barr would comply with one. The remedy for that is a citation for criminal contempt. But enforcing a congressional criminal contempt citation is ultimately referred to the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s office, the same office now headed by Timothy Shea, who is a close associate of… the attorney general. In fact, Shea was put in place last January after Barr executed a Berman-like move with the former U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jessie Liu, whose office had prosecuted Trump’s campaign associate Roger Stone. Shea’s office has since moved to drop the charges that came out of the special counsel’s investigation against Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Since the executive branch has always reserved the right to determine whether criminal contempt citations issued by Congress should be enforced, it’s safe to assume that this route won’t go anywhere, either.
That leaves just one last option: impeachment. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler has stated that pursuing impeachment against Barr would be a “waste of time” because the Senate would never vote to remove him. That may be true. It may also seem pointless to begin impeachment with an election only five months away. But that approach misses the point, and the urgency. Barr’s actions have the potential to conceal attempts by the president to corrupt the very electoral processes we are relying on to hold him accountable—and it is in Barr’s interest to assist Trump in this effort, since his own political survival (and avoidance of accountability) depends on it.
Put another way, Barr has the potential to inflict more damage on the U.S. than even the president because he can use the levers of justice to stonewall investigations, bury evidence, and provide a veneer of legality to illegal acts. Even if he isn’t ultimately removed, an impeachment hearing brings some measure of accountability to Barr, by making public the myriad ways he has subverted the administration of justice by acting as Trump’s legal goon. And because impeachment invokes a plenary and explicit constitutional authority, elevating its power beyond mere oversight, Barr’s refusal to comply with the House’s subpoenas in this process could themselves become impeachable acts of obstruction, as they did in the articles of impeachment against President Trump.
So, I will make one more “big deal” about the Walk Of Shame Tulsa thing. From Ed Mazz of HuffPo: ‘Walk Of Shame’: Deflated Trump’s Lonely Helicopter Walk Becomes Biting New Meme. The president’s walk from Marine One after his disappointing Oklahoma campaign rally gets the treatment on Twitter.
Some folks are arguing that he’s setting himself up for the role of come back kid, but let’s hope not meanwhile from that HuffPo piece.
The rally was meant to restart his 2020 reelection campaign, stalled since the coronavirus pandemic shut down most large gatherings.
But the crowd that turned out was much smaller than anticipated, and Trump returned to the White House with an open shirt and an undone necktie as he clutched one of his campaign’s signature red caps.
On Twitter, critics said Trump looked dejected ― and some even added music to the moment …
Bet that gets play all week on the late night shows and political cartoon pages everywhere!
And back to the real issue of Bill Barr …
Check this out from the Atlantic “Why Bill Barr Got Rid of Geoffrey Berman. This is how an authoritarian works to subvert justice.” It’s written by Paul Rosenzweig.
But the real question is: Why? Why replace Berman now, just five months before the election?
The answer lies in the firing earlier this year of Jessie Liu, the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. By firing Liu, Barr and his team took control of the Washington, D.C., U.S. attorney’s office. Until they did that, the office was following up on various indictments and charges that had been brought against Trump’s associates. Once they seized control, Barr’s team intervened to short-circuit that process. They interceded in the sentencing of Roger Stone, and more recently, they have made an effort to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn. In both circumstances, career prosecutors were so outraged that they withdrew from the case, and some resigned from the Department of Justice altogether.
This is how an authoritarian works to subvert justice. He purports to uphold the forms of justice (in this case, the formal rule that the attorney general and the president exercise hierarchical control over the U.S. attorneys) while undermining the substance of justice. In the Flynn case, for example, Barr has asserted an absolute, unreviewable authority to bring and dismiss cases at will—a power that, even if legally well founded, is a subversion of justice when misused.
That may be the game plan for New York as well. Barr may want Berman out so that he can use his newly enhanced control to dismiss or short-circuit all of the pending cases in Manhattan that implicate Trump or his associates.
We know those are many. We know that Trump’s various organizations, including his inauguration committee, are under investigation. We know that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani is under investigation. We know that Trump’s bank, Deutsche Bank, is under investigation.
Since taking office, Barr has repeatedly intervened to protect Trump. In addition to the behavior already mentioned, we might identify his attempt to protect Trump’s tax records from disclosure, or the way he distorted the true contents of the Mueller report. Barr’s actions are more like those of a consigliere to Don Trump than those of an attorney general of the United States, working for the American people.
Even that characterization is too kind to Barr. The attorney general’s apparent goal is to turn the Department of Justice into an arm of the president’s personal interests. He seems to have no regard for the department’s independence, and is doing long-term damage to the fabric of American justice.
There just doesn’t seem to be a level of corruption to dark and dangerous for this crowd. I fear for our country.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
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