Friday Reads: The Final Countdown?

Posted: December 14, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: 2018 elections, Afternoon Reads | Tags: , , | 49 Comments

Winter Scene from Arches National Park

Wow! Has it been cold here Sky Dancers!   It’s finally crept back up into the more seasonal sixties .  At least I’m not out in the cold but I’m thinking it’s just a bit of time before the Republican Party, its leaders, and the Golden Bull its been worshiping get thrown out on the ice floes.  Let’s hope there’s enough of them left by the time the country vomits them into history.

Enjoy the winter scenery at some of our nation’s best National Parks!  Let’s also hope they survive by the time we get rid of the party of corruption and destruction.

It’s not looking good for movement conservatives, war loving conservatives, or whatever Bill Kristol has become besides a Never Trumper. The headlines on the Trump mess are getting more brutal by the minute.  But, the folks on the outside are fairing pretty badly too.  The Weekly Standard is shutting down. John Poderhertz is out of a job but blogging all the same. It seems fitting that the demise of the Republican party should accompany the demise of the Standard.

The Weekly Standard will be no more. There is no real reason we are witnessing the magazine’s demise other than deep pettiness and a personal desire for bureaucratic revenge on the part of a penny-ante Machiavellian who works for its parent company.

There would at least be a larger meaning to the Standard’s end if it were being killed because it was hostile to Donald Trump. But I do not believe that is the case. Rather, I believe the fissures in the conservative movement and the Republican party that have opened up since Trump’s rise provided the company man with a convenient argument to make to the corporation’s owner, Philip Anschutz, that the company could perhaps harvest the Standard’s subscriber-base riches and then be done with it.

Winter in Yellowstone National Park

Where’s the tiniest violin in the world? Perhaps we should get an orchestra filled with them.  Here’s a bit from George Packer of The Atlantic: “The Corruption of the Republican Party. The GOP is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start.”    At least we’ve switched from burying Nancy Pelosi to burying the Republican party.  I still argue it came the minute they let white evangelicals in the door.

The corruption I mean has less to do with individual perfidy than institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means. Political corruption usually trails financial scandals in its wake—the foam is scummy with self-dealing—but it’s far more dangerous than graft. There are legal remedies for Duncan Hunter, the representative from California, who will stand trial next year for using campaign funds to pay for family luxuries.* But there’s no obvious remedy for what the state legislatures of Wisconsin and Michigan, following the example of North Carolina in 2016, are now doing.

Republican majorities are rushing to pass laws that strip away the legitimate powers of newly elected Democratic governors while defeated or outgoing Republican incumbents are still around to sign the bills. Even if the courts overturn some of these power grabs, as they have in North Carolina, Republicans will remain securely entrenched in the legislative majority through their own hyper-gerrymandering—in Wisconsin last month, 54 percent of the total votes cast for major-party candidates gave Democrats just 36 of 99 assembly seats—so they will go on passing laws to thwart election results. Nothing can stop these abuses short of an electoral landslide. In Wisconsin, a purple state, that means close to 60 percent of the total vote.

The fact that no plausible election outcome can check the abuse of power is what makes political corruption so dangerous. It strikes at the heart of democracy. It destroys the compact between the people and the government. In rendering voters voiceless, it pushes everyone closer to the use of undemocratic means.

Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself with a base of ever older, whiter, more male, more rural, more conservative voters. Demography can take a long time to change—longer than in progressives’ dreams—but it isn’t on the Republicans’ side. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why, while voter fraud knows no party, only the Republican Party wildly overstates the risk so that it can pass laws (including right now in Wisconsin, with a bill that reduces early voting) to limit the franchise in ways that have a disparate partisan impact. This is why, when some Democrats in the New Jersey legislature proposed to enshrine gerrymandering in the state constitution, other Democrats, in New Jersey and around the country, objected.

Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy, and will be for years to come.

Winter in Sequoia National Park

One of the old things I won’t mind ringing out is Paul Ryan. I think I’ve made that pretty clear.   John Nichols asks this for The Nation: “What the Hell Is Wrong With Paul Ryan? It is outrageous that the House Speaker continues to block action to end US support for Saudi atrocities against Yemen.”  Paul Ryan is always wrong. Does why really matter?

What the hell is wrong with Paul Ryan? At a point when the whole world is demanding urgent action to end the Saudi-led bombardment and starvation of Yemen, the Speaker of the House has been scheming to prevent congressional debate on a resolution to get the United States out of a humanitarian crisis.

This is not about partisanship or ideology. As Ryan was blocking action in the House this week, 11 Senate Republicans—including some of the chamber’s most conservative members—voted with Democrats to open the Senate debate on ending US military support for the Saudi Arabia’s assault on Yemen.

The 60-39 vote to advance the bipartisan effort by Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Mike Lee (R-UT) to invoke the war-powers authority of the Congress to constrain military interventions and engagements by the Executive Branch, cleared that way for a 56-41 vote on Thursday in favor of the S.J.Res. 54: “A joint resolution to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.”

“Today we tell the despotic regime in Saudi Arabia that we will not be a part of their military adventurism,” declared Sanders, who has for months made the case for congressional action on Yemen, waging a two-pronged campaign for the resolution. First, he made a moral argument, telling his colleagues they have a duty to end US support for Saudi abuses that have fostered a “humanitarian and strategic disaster” in Yemen—a crisis so severe that United Nations officials say it could lead to the worst famine in a century. Second, the senator made a constitutional argument, explaining that “The Senate must reassert its constitutional authority and end our support of this unauthorized and unconstitutional war.”

Winter in Crater Lake National Park

Frankly, Paul Ryan is into starving and killing just about everything that’s of no interest to Paul Ryan’s pocketbook.  Glad to see him go back to Wisconsin to hopefully freeze.  As the nation’s justice system unwinds the Trump Crime Syndicate, we get a better idea of how exactly  The Steele Dossier got so much right.  Lawfare Blog has a good read up by Grad Student  Sarah Grant of Harvard Law.

 The dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele remains a subject of fascination—or, depending on your perspective, scorn. Indeed, it was much discussed during former FBI Director Jim Comey’s testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Dec. 7. Published almost two years ago by BuzzFeed News in January 2017, the document received significant public attention, first for its lurid details regarding Donald Trump’s pre-presidential alleged sexual escapades in Russia and later for its role in forming part of the basis for the government’s application for a FISA warrant to surveil Carter Page.

Our interest in revisiting the compilation that has come to be called the “Steele Dossier” concerns neither of those topics, at least not directly. Rather, we returned to the document because we wondered whether information made public as a result of the Mueller investigation—and the passage of two years—has tended to buttress or diminish the crux of Steele’s original reporting.

The dossier is actually a series of reports—16 in all—that total 35 pages. Written in 2016, the dossier is a collection of raw intelligence. Steele neither evaluated nor synthesized the intelligence. He neither made nor rendered bottom-line judgments. The dossier is, quite simply and by design, raw reporting, not a finished intelligence product.

In that sense, the dossier is similar to an FBI 302 form or a DEA 6 form. Both of those forms are used by special agents of the FBI and DEA, respectively, to record what they are told by witnesses during investigations. The substance of these memoranda can be true or false, but the recording of information is (or should be) accurate. In that sense, notes taken by a special agent have much in common with the notes that a journalist might take while covering a story—the substance of those notes could be true or false, depending on what the source tells the journalist, but the transcription should be accurate.

With that in mind, we thought it would be worthwhile to look back at the dossier and to assess, to the extent possible, how the substance of Steele’s reporting holds up over time. In this effort, we considered only information in the public domain from trustworthy and official government sources, including documents released by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office in connection with the criminal casesbrought against Paul Manafort, the 12 Russian intelligence officers, the Internet Research Agency trolling operation and associated entities, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos. We also considered the draft statement of offensereleased by author Jerome Corsi, a memorandum released by House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Ranking Member Adam Schiff related to the Carter Page FISA applications and admissions directly from certain speakers.

These materials buttress some of Steele’s reporting, both specifically and thematically. The dossier holds up well over time, and none of it, to our knowledge, has been disproven.

The Nisqually Entrance to Mt Rainier National Park in the Winter

Jared Kushner may be the only person in the administration more corrupt than his father-in-law.  It astounds me to think he could wind up as Chief of Staff.  The Daily Beast has this today from some of the stunners we learned this month: ” Jared Kushner Replaced Michael Cohen as Trump’s National Enquirer Connection. The president’s son-in-law grew tight with David Pecker during the early months of the administration.”  I actually think this guy would make Nixon blush.

Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was handed a task considered critical to the president’s operations. In addition to serving as a senior adviser in the White House, he would also be playing the role of the main conduit between Trump and his friend David Pecker, the National Enquirer publisher and chief executive of AMI, who prosecutors said on Wednesday admitted to making a $150,000 hush-money payment “in concert with” the Trump campaign.

During the early months of the Trump era, Kushner performed the task admirably, discussing with Pecker various issues over the phone, including everything from international relations to media gossip, according to four sources familiar with the situation. Pecker, for his part, bragged to people that he was speaking to the president’s son-in-law and, more generally, about the level of access he had to the upper echelons of the West Wing, two sources with knowledge of the relationship recounted.

The relationship underscored both the wide breadth of responsibilities that Kushner was given in the White House—a portfolio that saw him serve as a point person on some of the most critical government functions and as a chief protector of the Trump family image—as well as the degree to which Trump continued to value the relationships he’d built up with key media figures during his time in New York real estate and reality TV.

Pecker, after all, was no bit player. He has been a valuable asset within Trump’s orbit, at least until federal investigators came knocking. His ties to Trump began well before the president was elected to office. But before Kushner was his main conduit, that role was played by Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney and fixer.

During the heat of the 2016 election, Pecker’s AMI and Enquirer—with Cohen helping facilitate matters behind the scenes—endorsed Trump, ran a catch-and-kill operation to suppress damaging stories of Trump’s alleged affairs, and published numerous negative articles on Trump’s political enemies and adversaries in the Republican primary. Trump himself used to contribute to the Enquirer and the future president reportedly also used the tabloid to settle his pettier, more personal scores. In late 2016, actress Salma Hayek claimed on a conference call hosted by the Hillary Clinton campaign that Trump had tried to date her and when she rejected him, he planted a false story about her in the Enquirer.

Pecker had banked on Cohen remaining in Trump’s political inner sanctum after the election. But during the presidential transition, it became clear that Trump’s then-fixer wouldn’t be landing a plum job in the administration—though he had told people close to him that he expected a senior position, even White House chief of staff, two sources with direct knowledge recall.

Big Horn Sheep at Waterton National Park during the Winter

These folks are so corrupt that even Chris Christie won’t touch the Chief of Staff position.  This is from ABC.

ABC News has learned former New Jersey governor and ABC News contributor Chris Christie interviewed for the position on Thursday, but released a statement Friday saying he’s asked the president to no longer consider him.

“It’s an honor to have the President consider me as he looks to choose a new White House chief-of-staff,” Christie said. “However, I’ve told the President that now is not the right time for me or my family to undertake this serious assignment. As a result, I have asked him to no longer keep me in any of his considerations for this post.”

The president is expected to continue the interview process over the weekend and next week, sources said.

Providing an update on his search Thursday, the president said he has whittled his list down to five candidates.

“We’re interviewing people for chief of staff, yes,” Trump told reporters, saying he has five “terrific” candidates lined up for the position so far.

Sources with knowledge of the president’s thinking told ABC News that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway are also on the list.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said the president is expected to make a decision on the post soon. He added, however, that Trump could decide to “extend” the current deal with Kelly. Kellyanne Conway also said Thursday on CNN that Kelly’s job could extend past the new year while the president continues his search.

So, we do seem to be in the middle of some TV presidency but I really don’t think it’s reality TV or even a crime series.  It’s more like a never ending soap opera with the bad people center stage and the good people waiting in the wings.  The New Congress cannot come soon enough.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

 

Monday Reads: Life in War Time

Posted: November 26, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: , , , , | 38 Comments

From the creative mind of my friend John Buss @repeat1968

Hello Dear Sky Dancers!

We couldn’t even have a peaceful thanksgiving holiday without the mayhem and mishap placeholder in the White House creating chaos through his policy weakness. Yes, he may have been off golfing and stealing money from the taxpayer to enrich his family crime syndicate, but some terrible things happened yesterday and I just can’t ignore them.

From WAPO: ‘These children are barefoot. In diapers. Choking on tear gas.’

A little girl from Honduras stares into the camera, her young features contorted in anguish. She’s barefoot, dusty, and clad only in a diaper and T-shirt. And she’s just had to run from clouds of choking tear gas fired across the border by U.S. agents.

A second photograph, which also circulated widely and rapidly on social media, shows an equally anguished woman frantically trying to drag the same child and a second toddler away from the gas as it spreads.

The three were part of a much larger group, perhaps 70 or 80 men, women and children, pictured in a wider-angle photo fleeing the tear gas. Reuters photographer Kim Kyung-Hoon shot the images, which provoked outrage and seemed at odds with President Trump’s portrayal of the caravan migrants as “criminals” and “gang members.”

Trump officials said that authorities had to respond with force after hundreds of migrants rushed the border near Tijuana on Sunday, some of them throwing “projectiles” at Customs and Border Protection personnel.

A migrant girl from Honduras, part of a caravan of thousands traveling from Central America, cries after running away from tear gas thrown by U.S. border agents. (Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

I can hardly speak about how wrong this is on all levels. Seeking Asylum is a legal process outlined in treaties we’ve signed. I don’t even know if we’ve got an experience basically lobbing chemical weapons across the border into the country of an ally. I did read this at the same WAPO article:

Trump’s response in an early-morning tweet on Monday was to call for Mexico to return the migrants to their home countries, and to again threaten to “close the border permanently.”

That’s never been done, and experts interviewed by The Washington Post on Sunday night knew of no provision explicitly allowing Trump to permanently close the borders. Most of the border, with the exception of designated crossings, is already closed, which doesn’t stop migrants from entering.

So it probably would not solve Trump’s problems with asylum seekers, who, by law, must be allowed to present their claims if in fact they are able to cross the border anywhere.

“This is yet another of several Trump attempts to change what he disparagingly calls the policy of ‘catch and release’ without or against legal authority,” said Yale Law School’s Harold Hongju Koh, legal adviser to the State Department during the Obama administration. “All have been blocked. What he does not understand,” Koh said in an email, “is that everyone crossing our Southern border is not illegally present. Those with valid asylum claims have a legal right to assert those claims and remain.”

Closing the border “permanently” or otherwise would conflict with the asylum laws, agreed Peter S. Margulies, an immigration law expert at Roger Williams University School of Law.

Had the migrants made it to the border and presented themselves as asylum seekers, U.S. officials would have been required by federal law to consider their claim before sending them back to Mexico. Indeed, they are required to do so whether the migrants cross at a designated point of entry or anywhere else.

U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar forcefully reminded Trump of that law last week when he issued a nationwide restraining order against the president’s plan to consider asylum requests only from migrants who cross at legal checkpoints. It was Tigar’s ruling that prompted Trump to lash out last week against the “Obama judge” and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which in turn brought a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

Trump’s legal options appear limited. “The border is very long,” Margulies told The Post. But if the administration can “stop people just short of the border, there’s a better argument that those people are not entitled to asylum. I think it would be terrible policy and I think it would be morally repugnant,” he said, “but the administration would be on better legal footing.”

Attempting to stop them short of the border appears to be just what Trump may be planning.

I usually don’t copy and paste this much from one source, but the article by Tim Elfrink and Fred Barbash–accompanyied by heart-wrenching photos–was difficult to chop up into small excerpts.

These are really dark times. We now have more children in ICE custody than ever before. The attacks on families seeking aslyum overshadowed this report on jailing children on CBS and Sixty Mintues.

Lee Gelernt: It became such a horrific scene that they started telling the parents, “Oh, your child is just going to take a shower, or just going to get some medical treatment,” and then the parent would never see the child again.

Lee Gelernt is an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. In July, he convinced a federal judge to order the reunification of the children. But when the government realized it lost track of many of the parents, the Trump administration told the court reuniting the families was the ACLU’s problem.

Lee Gelernt: The government took these children away from their parents, and then deported hundreds and hundreds of the parents without the children. The judge said, “These parents need to be with their children.” And the government said, “Well, if you wanna find the parents, we don’t know where they are. Let the ACLU look for them.”

This is the Homeland Security order to arrest and detain all adults who crossed illegally to seek asylum. The copy released to the public was censored by the administration. But we’ve obtained what the White House didn’t want the public to see. The document reveals that child separation began nine months earlier than the administration acknowledged. There was a pilot program in the busy “El Paso sector” from “July to November 2017”. We don’t know how many children were taken in those five months. The censored part of the memo explains a reason for the policy — deterrence — as it “will have the greatest impact on current flows” [of immigrants.]

But Cecilia Munoz says the Obama administration found that deterrent messages failed to turn back immigrants.

Cecilia Munoz: And the reason for that is, if your child was told today by the gangs, “Your life is at risk unless you start running drugs for us.” You’re thinking much more about their safety today and tomorrow than you’re thinking about, “What’s going to happen once we get to our destination?”

Jeff Sessions: We are not going to let the country be overwhelmed.

Security was the stated reason for the policy change. One top White House official called immigration an existential threat to America. But Homeland Security’s inspector general found the chaotic implementation of the policy undermined law enforcement. The report says, “instead of patrolling and securing the border, officers had to supervise and take care of children.” And those officers weren’t prepared for their new role, according to Scott Shuchart, who recently left Homeland Security.

https://twitter.com/WernerTwertzog/status/900382564787122177

We lurch from consitutional and humanitarian crises–of his creation–to the incredible audacity of authoritarian regimes who feel empowered by the lawlessness and transactional greed of what is supposedly the leader of the free world. Russian seized Ukrainian navl ships over the weekend.

Russia has fired on and seized three Ukrainian naval vessels off the Crimean Peninsula in a major escalation of tensions between the two countries.

Two gunboats and a tug were captured by Russian forces. A number of Ukrainian crew members were injured.

Each country blames the other for the incident. On Monday Ukrainian MPs are due to vote on declaring martial law.

The crisis began when Russia accused the Ukrainian ships of illegally entering its waters.

The Russians placed a tanker under a bridge in the Kerch Strait – the only access to the Sea of Azov, which is shared between the two countries.

During a meeting of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, President Petro Poroshenko described the Russian actions as “unprovoked and crazy”.

Emboldened by the ineffective foreign policy of Trump and his penchant for adoring strongman, Putin continues to annex the Ukraine.

Tensions in the Sea of Azov have been simmering for months and this weekend its waters came to the boil.

Russian ships opened fire at three Ukrainian naval vessels Sundayafter they attempted to enter the sea.

Ukrainian media reported that 23 crew members were detained, including six who were injured, and the vessels seized.

Kiev’s navy is hugely outgunned and outnumbered by Moscow. Ukraine responded by putting its forces on high alert.

Some Western experts say the Kremlin’s tactics in the Sea of Azov are straight out of the Kremlin playbook.

Analysts have been warning for months that the Azov, which is just under half the size of Lake Superior, is the latest example of Russia carrying out “creeping annexation” — where borders are subtly shifted to take territory, or in this case waters, from former Soviet allies.

There is other quite serious news today.

From the AP: “GM to slash 14,700 jobs in North America”

General Motors will lay off 14,700 factory and white-collar workers in North America and put five plants up for possible closure as it restructures to cut costs and focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles.

The reduction includes 8,100 white-collar workers, some of whom will take buyouts and others who will be laid off. Most of the affected factories build cars that won’t be sold in the U.S. after next year. They could close or they could get different vehicles to build. They will be part of contract talks with the United Auto Workers union next year.

Plants without products include assembly plants in Detroit; Lordstown, Ohio; and Oshawa, Ontario. Also affected are transmission factories in Warren, Michigan, as well as Baltimore.

About 6,000 factory workers could lose jobs in the U.S. and Canada, although some could transfer to truck plants.

Another headline from WAPO: “In the United States, right-wing violence is on the rise”. In other words, something wicked this way comes. His reign is the Pandimonium Carnival.

Over the past decade, attackers motivated by right-wing political ideologies have committed dozens of shootings, bombings and other acts of violence, far more than any other category of domestic extremist, according to a Washington Post analysis of data on global terrorism. While the data show a decades-long drop-off in violence by left-wing groups, violence by white supremacists and other far-right attackers has been on the rise since Barack Obama’s presidency — and has surged since President Trump took office.

This year has been especially deadly.Just last month, 13 people died in two incidents: AKentucky gunman attempted to enter a historically black church, police say, then shot and killed two black patrons in a nearby grocery store. And an anti-Semitic loner who had expressed anger about a caravan of Central American refugees that Trump termed an “invasion” has been charged with gunning down 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, the deadliest act of anti-Semitic violence in U.S. history.

This month brought two more bodies: A military veteran who had railed online against women and blacks opened fire in a Tallahassee yoga studio, killing two women and wounding five. All told, researchers say at least 20 people have died this year in suspected right-wing attacks.

From ABC News: Jared Kushner pushed to inflate Saudi arms deal to $110 billion: Sources: It’s obvious the Saudis have been bailing out his bad business deals. How many foreign interests own the Trump Family Crime Syndicate?

President Donald Trump‘s reluctance to hold Saudi leadership accountable for the brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi stemmed from a partly aspirational $110 billion arms deal between the U.S. and Saudia Arabia that was inflated at the direction of Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, according to two U.S. officials and three former White House officials.

Kushner, in a bid to symbolically solidify the new alliance between the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia while claiming a victory on the president’s first foreign trip to Riyadh, pushed State and Defense officials to inflate the figure with arms exchanges that were aspirational at best, the officials said. Secretary of Defense James Mattis supported Kushner’s effort and ultimately endorsed the memorandum, according to a former NSC official familiar with the matter.

“We need to sell them as much as possible,” Kushner told colleagues at a national securitycouncil meeting weeks before the May 2017 summit in Saudi Arabia, according to an administration official familiar with the matter.

nother U.S. official said there was a back and forth between Kushner and Department of Defense and State officials on how to get to a larger number because the officials initially told Kushner that realistically they had about $15 billion worth of deals in works, based on the Saudi government’s interest in a THAAD system and maintenance of other systems.

But even that order has not been fulfilled.

The Saudis have bypassed the September deadline for one of the pricier items on the list – the THAAD or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile system. A Defense Department spokesperson said the sale has not been finalized.

The question is what are the Trumps getting out of this deal?

From Spencer Ackerman at the Daily Beast: “Trump Ramped Up Drone Strikes in America’s Shadow Wars. In his first two years in office, Donald Trump launched 238 drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia—way beyond what the ‘Drone President’ Barack Obama did.”

The U.S. president inherited a remotely piloted weapon of death from his predecessor. In his earliest period in office, he used this lethal robot force promiscuously, sharply escalating attacks on suspected terrorists away from his declared wars. As time went on, his use of drone strikes in those places diminished.

Barack Obama? Well, yes. But a look at available statistics for drone strikes on America’s undeclared battlefield shows that this description also applies to Donald Trump.

In 2009 and 2010, Obama launched 186 drone strikes on Yemen, Somalia, and especially Pakistan. Donald Trump’s drone strikes during his own first two years on the three pivotal undeclared battlefields, however, eclipse Obama’s—but without a corresponding reputation for robot-delivered bloodshed, or even anyone taking much notice. In 2017 and 2018 to date, Trump has launched 238 drone strikes there, according to data provided to The Daily Beast by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and the drone-watchers at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London.

Those numbers come with a slew of asterisks. The number of drone strikes on the full-fledged acknowledged battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria have, ironically, proven far more difficult to track than those in shadow war zones—and knowledgeable observers like Chris Woods of the UK’s Airwars organization believe that the true center of the drone strikes is found there. Additionally, the death toll from those strikes in shadow war zones, especially of civilians, is at best a rough estimate.

This week probably has had some of the most devastingly awful news for world peace we’ve seen in ages. It’s really gotten to me today. What a wicked bunch of people put in a wicked man to turn the world more wicked. And it’s happening in our name with our tax dollars …

What’s on your reading and blogging list today

Lazy Caturday Reads: Trump Is Successfully Damaging U.S. Institutions

Posted: November 24, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | 26 Comments

By Paula Zima

Good Afternoon!!

It’s time to recognize that Trump is actively trying to destroy our democratic institutions. Yes he is crude, stupid, and narcissistic, be he is succeeding. I wonder if we really can recover from the damage he has done.

At The National, Hussein Ibish writes: In his drive to dismantle American institutions, Trump is following in Erdogan’s footsteps.

This year’s Thanksgiving holiday in the United States was punctuated by an unprecedented war of words between President Donald Trump and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Mr Trump dismissed the federal judiciary as, in effect, partisan hacks. Mr Roberts fired back defending judicial integrity. The Republican heads of two of the three branches of US government were suddenly clashing.

But this was readily foreseeable. In these pages, I have been tracking Mr Trump’s experiment in American de-institutionalisation, and specifically predicted it back on June 2.

By Abraham van Strij

Observing that the US president was systematically discrediting all sources of authority and veracity beyond his own direct control − beginning with the press, and moving on to Congress, the FBI and Justice Department, and the intelligence services – I wrote that “his probable next target is alarmingly obvious. An independent judiciary is an enormous obstacle and threat to any leader. The courts must be next…”

Mr Trump has never had any respect for courts. He repeatedly attacked Gonzalo Curiel, the judge presiding over the lawsuit against his “Trump University” over alleged fraudulent practices, as a hopelessly biased “Mexican”, although he was born in Indiana.

Ibish describes the similarities to Erdogan in Turkey.

Mr Erdogan inherited a Turkish system with many institutions, no matter how fledgling or fragile they may have been. He has systematically dismantled them, particularly after the failed 2016 coup attempt, and replaced them with hollow institutional simulacra that, in reality, simply rubberstamp his own decisions.

Whether he fully realises it or not, that’s exactly the de-institutionalisation process Mr Trump is groping towards in the United States.

And he is going down the list of independent sources of authority and information with a relatively impressive precision, beginning with the media, which was low-hanging fruit, and only now directly attacking the courts and his other new target: senior military leaders, such as the widely respected retired Admiral William McRaven, architect of the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Ibish isn’t completely negative; he suggests that the SCOTUS and the Mueller investigation may still stop Trump, but right now it certainly seems that Trump is making rapid progress, especially in his efforts to compromise the Department of Justice and the FBI. At the moment he’s also working to make the CIA irrelevant.

By David Brooke

Remember early on in his presidency Trump praised Erdogan for successfully creating an autocracy in Turkey. The New York Times (April 17, 2017): Trump Congratulates Erdogan on Turkey Vote Cementing His Rule.

President Trump called President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Monday to congratulate him on winning a much-disputed referendum that will cement his autocratic rule over the country and, in the view of many experts, erode Turkey’s democratic institutions.

Those concerns were not mentioned in a brief readout of the phone call that the White House released Monday night. After noting Mr. Trump’s congratulations, the one-paragraph statement pivoted to a recent American missile strike on a Syrian airfield, which it said he and Mr. Erdogan had also discussed.

The statement did not say whether Mr. Trump had raised independent reports of voting irregularities during the Turkish referendum or the government’s heavy-handed tactics in the weeks leading up to it, when the country was under a state of emergency. The State Department noted both issues in a more cautious, less laudatory statement issued a few hours earlier.

The White House was also silent about the long-term implications of the referendum, which some experts have likened to a deathblow to democracy in Turkey.

Clearly, Trump did not see those outcomes as in any way negative.

In March of 2018, Trump praised China’s Xi Jinping gaining the power to be “president for life.” The Guardian: ‘Maybe we’ll give that a shot’: Donald Trump praises Xi Jinping’s power grab.

Donald Trump has celebrated Xi Jinping’s bid to shepherd China back into an era of one-man dictatorship, suggesting the United States might one day “give that a shot”.

 

By Fritz von Uhde

China’s authoritarian leader took power in 2012 and had been expected to rule until 2023. However, last week it emerged that Xi would attempt to use an annual meeting of China’s parliament, which kicks off on Monday morning, to abolish presidential term limits by changing the Chinese constitution.

Liberals have condemned the power grab, which will almost certainly be approved by members of the National People’s Congress who have flocked to Beijing for the two-week summit. Experts say the amendment paves the way for Xi to be China’s ruler-for-life. “This is a critical moment in China’s history,” Cheng Li, a prominent expert in elite Chinese politics who has criticised the move, told AP.

However, Trump offered a more positive assessment during a fundraising event at his Mar-a-Lago estate, where he hosted Xi last April. “He’s now president for life. President for life. And he’s great,” the US president reportedly told Republican donors.

“And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll give that a shot some day,” Trump added, according to CNN which obtained a recording of what it described as an upbeat, joke-filled speech.

In his foreign policy decisions, Trump is working to destroy the reputation of the U.S. as a defender of human rights. The latest shocking example is his support of Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman’s murder of a Saudi dissident journalist. Jackson Diehl at The Washington Post: How the Khashoggi killing ruinously defined Trump.

Sometimes a middling foreign policy crisis produces a presidential decision of far more consequence. It clarifies and crystallizes the executive’s core instincts, thereby establishing a road map for managing the United States that countries around the world then follow. President Trump’s decision to excuse Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman for ordering the murder and dismemberment of one of his own citizens will be one of those junctures.

By Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798 – 1861)

Trump’s “maybe he did and maybe he didn’t” proclamation last Tuesday looked like a hasty, Thanksgiving Eve attempt to rid himself of a troubling mess in a part of the world that he wishes he could forget. Yet like President Barack Obama’s retreat from his own red line on Syria’s use of chemical weapons, Trump’s failure to exact accountability for the slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi will resonate far beyond the Middle East.

In Obama’s case, the world learned that the U.S. president was not willing to back up U.S. leadership with military force, even at the expense of his own credibility. Russia and China responded accordingly; the invasions of the South China Sea and Ukraine followed.

The Khashoggi affair similarly confirms several fundamental truths about Trump. The first and most obvious is that his narrow, idiosyncratic and sometimes personalinterests take precedence over the defense of traditional American values and even the expectation of honest treatment by an ally. Not just Mohammed’s fellow Arab rulers but despots everywhere will study this case and conclude: If you heap flattery on Trump, court him with exotic entertainment, patronize his family businesses and promise to buy American, you can get away with outrages that would once have ensured censure and sanction from Washington.

We can hope for pushback on Trump’s authoritarian impulses from a Democratic House beginning in January, but right now the main opposition to Trump is coming from the courts and legal scholars, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Kellyanne Conway’s husband George Conway. ABC News:

This time, George Conway issued President Donald Trump a fact check on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the largest of the circuit courts and a target of the president’s anger after a judge in Northern California blocked him from banning asylum seekers who didn’t enter the country at specific points of entry.

By Frank R. Sofo

The federal trial judge, Judge Jon Tigar, ruled against the president last week. Current U.S. immigration law, as Judge Jon Tigar interpreted it in the case, allows people to seek asylum no matter where they enter. Tigar is not actually a judge for the 9th Circuit, but the case will likely head there once appealed….

“Every case that gets filed in the 9th Circuit, we get beaten,” Trump said. He also called Tigar an “Obama judge” because he was appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2012. The intended insult prompted a strong — and rare — rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative-leaning Supreme Court judge, who underlined that there are no “Obama judges” — judges do “their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

That’s when George Conway got involved, as did other legal scholars.

Their first point was that the 9th Circuit is not particularly special when it comes to reversals before the Supreme Court.

Read the details at the link above.

Yesterday Dakinikat wrote about the recent court decision that “collusion” is a crime. Later yesterday we learned the New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against the Trump Foundation will proceed. The New York Times:

A state judge ruled on Friday that a lawsuit by the New York State attorney general could proceed against President Trump and the Trump Foundation over allegations of misused charitable assets, self-dealing and campaign finance violations during the 2016 presidential campaign.

By Michael Peter Ancher

Mr. Trump’s lawyers had argued that the court did not have jurisdiction over Mr. Trump, as president, and that the statutes of limitations had expired in the case of some of the actions at issue. They also contended the attorney general’s office suffered from a “pervasive bias” against Mr. Trump.

In her 27-page ruling, Justice Saliann Scarpulla disagreed. “I find I have jurisdiction over Mr. Trump,” she wrote….

It was the second time this year that a New York State judge in Manhattan had decided that Mr. Trump, just because he is president, is not immune from civil court cases that involve his unofficial activities or actions that took place before he was in office.

In June, Justice Jennifer Schecter ruled that a defamation lawsuit could proceed against Mr. Trump for disparaging women who accused him of sexual misconduct. The suit was brought by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice.”

Justice Schecter wrote in her ruling: “There is absolutely no authority for dismissing or staying a civil action related purely to unofficial conduct because the defendant is the President of the United States.” Justice Scarpulla quoted the passage in her own ruling.

Justice Scarpulla also cited the decision to allow a sexual harassment suit brought by Paula Jones against Bill Clinton to proceed during his time as president.

So there is still hope, but I think we need to recognize that Trump is actively working to become a dictator. It can happen here.

What stories are you following today?

Friday Reads: When Black Friday Comes …

Posted: November 23, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: | 21 Comments

It’s Friday! And Mueller is Coming! He’s an even better holiday guest than Santa!

Today’s news in traitors includes crazy conspiratorial nut Jerome Corsi. Yes! Another domino falls and brings us closer to the Cretin holding the White House hostage. From WAPO and really hot off the presses: “Stone associate Jerome Corsi is in plea negotiations with special counsel, according to a person with knowledge of the talks”. Stone and Dumb Junior cannot be too far behind. Too borrow a turn of phrase, “I love it!”.

Conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi is in plea negotiations with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, according to a person with knowledge of the talks.

The talks with Corsi — an associate of both President Trump and GOP operative Roger Stone — could bring Mueller’s team closer to determining whether Trump or his advisers were linked to WikiLeaks’ release of hacked Democratic emails in 2016, a key part of his long-running inquiry.

Corsi provided research on Democratic figures during the campaign to Stone, a longtime Trump adviser. For months, the special counsel has been scrutinizing Stone’s activities in an effort to determine whether he coordinated with WikiLeaks. Stone and WikiLeaks have repeatedly denied any such coordination.

Stone has said that Corsi also has a relationship with Trump, built on their shared interest in the falsehood that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

David Gray, an attorney for Corsi, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Mueller. Stone declined to comment on Corsi’s plea negotiations. An attorney for Trump declined to comment.

The deal is not yet complete and could still be derailed. Last week, Corsi said his efforts to cooperate with prosecutors had broken down and that he expected to be indicted on a charge of allegedly lying. He described feeling under enormous pressure from Mueller and assured his supporters that he remains supportive of the president.

In a webcast and a series of interviews, Corsi said he had spoken to prosecutors for 40 hours and feared that he could spend much of the remainder of his life in prison.

After two months of interviews, Corsi, 72, said he felt his brain was “mush.”

“Trying to explain yourself to these people is impossible . . . I guess I couldn’t tell the special prosecutor what he wanted to hear,” he added.

Meanwhile, His Lazy and Greediness is costing us money which is going directly into the pockets of the Trump Family Crime Syndicate.

Krampus is coming and he better bring a lot of sacks and cages! A lot of discussion has been held in the media about the idea of collusions being an actual crime as compared to something along the lines of conspiracy. Here’s an interesting take from Sidebars blog. There’s a lot of legal wonky goodness here.

Is collusion a crime? Since the beginning of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, allegations of “collusion” have dominated the debate. President Trump regularly claims there was “no collusion” with the Russians seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election. His attorneys and other supporters also have repeatedly argued that even if collusion took place, that would not be criminal. But last week, in a case brought by Mueller, a federal judge upheld the legal theory under which “collusion” may indeed be a crime.

I’m not sure how the term “collusion” became so central to discussions of the Mueller investigation. It really should be banned altogether. (I know, I know — this from the guy who just wrote a blog post with “collusion” in the title, right? But hey, I can’t unilaterally disarm.) All it does is breed confusion and lead to diversionary arguments about whether collusion is criminal.

It’s true there is no criminal statute titled “collusion.” But as I’ve noted in several places (here and here, for example) the relevant crime is conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. 371. Collusion refers to an agreement with others to achieve some improper end. In criminal law, we call that a conspiracy – a partnership in crime. And the breadth of the federal conspiracy statute makes it particularly well-suited for cases like Mueller’s probe of Russian interference with the election.

Title 18 Section 371 prohibits conspiracies to commit an offense against the United States, which means a conspiracy to commit any federal crime. But it also broadly prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States “in any manner or for any purpose.” For nearly a century the Supreme Court has held that conspiracies to defraud the United States include conspiracies to impair, obstruct, or defeat the lawful functions of the federal government through deceit or dishonesty. This is true even if the actions of the conspirators are not independently illegal, and even if the government is not deprived of any money or property.

In this post in the summer of 2017, I argued Mueller could use this theory to charge that individuals who agreed to work together to interfere with the election through deceptive and dishonest methods conspired to impair, obstruct, or defeat the function of the Federal Election Commission to administer a fair and honest election. This legal theory would apply not only to Russians but also to any members of the Trump campaign or other Americans who worked — or colluded — with them. And it applies whether or not the actions taken by the co-conspirators are otherwise illegal; in other words, the “collusion” itself can be the crime

So, this outing out to burn like a yuletide bonfire by the Mississippi. Here’s hoping it works on the Ptomac too! I even get to quote Page Six which I believe is unique for me. I do not plan to read the book but it should be an interesting topic on the pundit circuit. Page Six presents: “National Enquirer editor writing book about ‘Trump and his women’”

The National Enquirer’s long-held secrets about Donald Trump may be about to get substantially less secret.

Page Six is told that the longtime executive editor of the tabloid, Barry Levine, is penning a book for Hachette about the president.

A source says that the book will look into “Trump and his women,” although other insiders tell us that it could be more wide-ranging, even looking at the formerly cozy relationship between the Enquirer’s owner, David Pecker, and Trump. That said, it’s unclear exactly what Levine’s contract with the Enquirer would allow him to reveal about Pecker.

Of course, Pecker has been at the center of an investigation into alleged hush money payouts made to Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels — who both claim to have had affairs with Trump while he was married to First Lady Melania Trump. In August, Pecker was granted immunity in the probe.

Either way, Levine — who left the Enquirer in 2016 after 17 years — will have plenty of previously unreported material for the tome.

In its reporting on the relationship between Pecker and Trump, the Wall Street Journal wrote in June, that, “Tips about Mr. Trump poured into the tabloid after his television show ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ took off in 2002, but the Enquirer turned away stories that could paint him in a bad light, two former American Media employees said,” adding, “Barry Levine … reminded them that Mr. Pecker wouldn’t allow it, these former employees said.” No impediment now exists.

Let’s watch those fundi preachers swallow this.

The Guardian has an exclusive interview with Hillary that’s worth a read: “US media must ‘get smarter’ to tackle Trump, says Hillary Clinton”. Well, again, she speaks the truth to idiots.

Hillary Clinton has criticised the US media over its coverage of Donald Trump, calling on the press to “get smarter” about holding to account a president who is a master of diversion and distraction.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Clinton also offered a stinging rebuke of the Republican party’s base, saying it had become enthralled by the president’s “insults and attacks and entertainment and spectacle”.

“The Republican party has collapsed in the face of Trump,” she said.

Clinton also criticised Trump’s repeated attacks on the press, behaviour she suggested had echoes of authoritarian and fascist political leaders who erode faith in facts and evidence. She said Trump had proved himself skilled at “tweeting and insulting and dominating the news cycles” and said he was too often left unchallenged by the press.

“I believe that where we are now in the political cycle is that the press does not know how to cover these candidates who are setting themselves on fire every day, who are masters of diversion and distraction,” she said.

The former Democratic presidential nominee specifically called out CBS 60 Minutes over its interview with the Trump last month for not asking the president about a major New York Times investigation into alleged tax dodging in his family real estate empire.

“I have a high regard for 60 Minutes and for Lesley Stahl who’s a terrific journalist,” Clinton said, before noting there was “not a single question” about the New York Times story

“So at some point, the press has to get smarter because that’s basically how most voters get their information,” she said, adding that often the quest for “balance” resulted in facts being relegated in favour of opinion.

“If you’re into both-side-ism – so, you know, on the one hand this, and on the other hand that – really there’s no factual basis, there’s no evidence, there’s no record. Everybody lies, everybody gilds the lily. It doesn’t really matter. That just opens a door to somebody like him.”

https://twitter.com/kenkschultz/status/1066024872525090823

Is this the beginning of the end? Is the Mueller investigation getting active publicly so we can get a good hint at when our national nightmare ends?

The odds are high that special counsel Robert Mueller will soon announce dramatic news that will escalate our national discussion of the Russia scandal to red-hot levels of intensity that may well compel Congress to begin a serious discussion of impeachment.

Three critical matters were long obvious to informed observers of the Russia investigation. First, Mueller was well aware of the possibility that President Trump would attempt to execute a “Saturday Night Massacre” attack against him and the Russia investigation shortly after the midterm voting was concluded.

Second, Mueller has used the “silent period” during the midterm campaign to advance the investigation assertively without public discussion, under the radar of the media until now. Third, the issues of obstruction of justice and abuse of power are far more grave than is generally realized.

If it is true that Trump aggressively pushed for criminal prosecution of his political opponents and that then-White House counsel Donald McGahn had to intervene, keep in mind that McGahn has spent dozens of hours cooperating with Mueller and his team.

The quiet period for Mueller will soon end. Recently, Mueller and lawyers for Paul Manafort agreed to seek a delay in filing court documents that would detail Manafort’s cooperation with the investigation until next Monday.

In other words, in a few days, there will almost certainly be publicly known major news that will give the court and the American people a much clearer idea of exactly how Manafort has been cooperating with Mueller.

It is very possible, and in my view likely, that there have already been indictments issued and plea bargain agreements reached that for now remain under seal, which will be unsealed and announced in the coming days and weeks.

Trump attempting to name Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general can be seen as a desperate last-ditch effort by Trump — which is ultimately doomed to fail — to derail the Mueller investigation.

This speculation is written for HuffPo by BRENT BUDOWSKY. And here’s one from The Atlantic that tries to explain why so many white women vote themselves into second class citzenship so people of color may be put down to 3rd class citizenship.

Okay, Here we go … wtf is wrong with them? And this is by Katha Pollitt.

For almost three years now, reporters have been begging tired farmers and miners eating their pancakes at Josie’s Diner in Smallville, Nebraska, to say they’ve seen the light. They never do. White evangelical women sneaking away from the Republican Party make for a good story—but they didn’t stop Ted Cruz from getting 81 percent of the white evangelical vote in Texas.

After Trump took the White House, and even after political scientists and pollsters figured out that many Trump supporters were not out-of-work Rust Belters but just your basic well-off Republicans, there was an orgy of self-criticism among Democrats and progressives. Somehow, those voters were our fault; we had neglected them, disrespected them, not felt their pain. The important sociologist Arlie Hochschild wrote a whole book about right-wingers in the Louisiana bayous who rejected curbs on the oil and gas industry that was destroying their way of life and instead blamed their problems on others (people of color, immigrants, women) “cutting in line.” In Strangers in Their Own Land, Hochschild called on us to climb the “empathy wall.” The unstated implication was that liberal condescension—not Trumpers’ racism, say—is the problem.

Another version of this idea is to call on progressive white women to convert other white women who support Trump. Nobody calls on white men to convert white men, because everyone assumes that’s impossible, but for some reason, white women who hate abortion and taxes and Obamacare, who want to “build the wall” and “lock her up,” are supposed to be pliable—and it’s the duty of liberal white women to expiate their own racism by bringing them around. It reminds me of the time years ago when a group of Nation interns came back after spending a weekend at a conference of Evangelical women. They beat themselves up about how those women weren’t feminists; again, it was all our fault.

The assumption is that we have the right ideas; we just haven’t been conveying them persuasively enough to win the other side over. But let me ask a question: When was the last time someone persuaded you to change your worldview? I have written this column for over 20 years, and I doubt I’ve brought more than a handful of people to my way of thinking. So far as I know, the converts were mostly young people who hadn’t given the matter much thought or were leaning that way already. Mostly, what changes people’s minds about important convictions is experience: something new and unusual that shakes their settled views. One of the evangelical Beto fans profiled by the Times was moved by her time meeting with a family separated at the border; it could just as easily have been new friends, a religious experience, falling in love, a charismatic teacher, or being surrounded by people with different beliefs.

Of course, people do change their minds, but probably not after being proselytized by someone they barely know (or, in the case of family, know all too well). You won’t get far inviting your Trumpie co-worker out for coffee so you can politely suggest she’s a racist, or giving your Trumpie cousin a hard time about her Facebook posts at a baby shower.

So why is it so hard to believe that white women who voted for Trump are mostly as fixed in their views as you are? They voted for him for dozens of reasons: to fit in with their family and community, to preserve or gain status, to piss off the libtards, to ally with their menfolk, to keep MS-13 from killing their children, to bring back jobs stolen by Mexico and China, to keep taxes low and black children out of their schools, or because it’s what Jesus wants. You may think their beliefs are bigoted and ill-informed and illogical—which they are. You may marvel that women who think the polite and scandal-free Barack Obama is the Antichrist can believe that foul-mouthed, abusive Donald Trump is God’s instrument, like King David. What you are not going to do is make them see it differently by reminding them that at least 15 women have accused Trump of a range of sexual offenses.

Calling them out as racist, xenophobic foot soldiers of the patriarchy isn’t going to make a dent. Just as you don’t want to be the obedient wife of some porn-addicted Christian bully, they don’t want to be a slutty baby-killer like you. I’m not saying that, given enough time and a pleasing, patient personality—you’ve got one of those, don’t you?—you couldn’t eventually bring one or two around. But is this a good use of your energies?

Go read the rest. It’s full of holiday joy and good advice. I was especially glad to see this as I’ve been called out to “make inroads” as if I haven’t tried in my 40 plus years of committed feminist work. Believe me, when Phyliss Schafly came out of that orange smoke from the trap door with her green make up and cackling, I was as surprised as any other woman just wanting to live her life. I fought them in the 80s and 90s. I tried talking to them in the 80s and 90s and some where in the mid 90s I gave up and decided to spend the rest of my life in liberal enclaves where I just don’t have to deal with them so all these younger women asking me to talk to them can just shove it. I got Kate Millett and Bette Friedan to talk to each other after years of throwing shade at each other in a bar in West Omaha. I consider that my last best diplomatic moment. So, bookmark Katha’s article and send it to any one that’s trying to talk you into creating a bridge that will go no where.

The deal is there are more of us than them. There are more of us coming up all the time and less of them. Just organize and outvote them. Pay attention to judicial appointments and gerrymandering in your state and fight that. Don’t engage in building a bridge to no where.

Have a good long weekend of stuffing yourself with leftovers! And remember, It’s Mueller Time!!!

What’s on your blogging and reading list today?

Monday Reads: Raking Bad

Posted: November 19, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: , , | 33 Comments

Finnish woman trolls Trump

Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!

I’m one tired old lady and there’s a long list of things wearing me out including a record breaking cold snap which always bests me and my drafty old house. Then, there’s me waiting and listening for the status of my many friends in California and their various fur babies. I have one friend still sitting in his apartment in Chico, basically surrounded by smoke.

The pictures are overwhelming and the stories even more so. What makes it even more awful is that the Placeholder in the White House thinks that lazy Californians just don’t rake enough leaves and so they ask for these deadly, destructive infernos. Oh, and he can’t even keep the name of the totally destroyed Paradise, California straight. He miscalled it “Pleasure” several times while visiting what remains. This man is a clear and present danger to all living things.

The people he visited were less than enthusiastic. This included some of his voters.

When President Donald Trump rolled into town Saturday, some Camp Fire evacuees in Chico shelters felt like they were a world away, though they were mere miles apart.

Trump joined Gov. Jerry Brown and Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom in the morning for a tour of the devastation to the Paradise area and a visit to the incident base in Chico before heading to Southern California in the early afternoon.

Some evacuees were grateful for his visit. Others were relieved they didn’t have to shake his hand. A few had no idea the president was in Butte County at all.

Paradise resident Michael Reasons, who has been staying at the Neighborhood Church evacuation center in Chico, said that Trump’s visit meant “nothing” to him. Reasons, 50, was walking around with signs for his missing dog Saturday afternoon.

“For me, it doesn’t make a bit of difference,” he said. “I know what kind of person he really is.”

What those impacted by the fire really need right now is positivity, and to know that they are genuinely cared about, Reasons said.

“He really has a hard time showing compassion for, you know, people,” Reasons said. “I don’t really have a lot of respect for the guy.”

Ambrose Reuter, a 68-year-old Paradise resident, said he didn’t vote for Trump or Hillary Clinton in 2016 because he didn’t like either candidate, but he appreciated the president paying a visit.

“It meant a lot that he came out personally,” Reuter said between bites of KFC chicken outside of the church.

Paradise resident Laura Owens, who described herself as a Trump supporter, struggled to answer when asked what it meant to her that the President came out. Owens, 46, has been staying at the East Avenue Church in Chico with her three teenagers, parents and two dogs.

The first night, they slept in a tent outside because the shelter was at capacity, she said.

“I heard he was coming, but that’s so far out of this realm,” Owens said. “Even though that’s amazing and it would have been nice if he had come here, I can’t think about that.”

Meanwhile, Paradise resident Joe Redfern, 72, said he was relieved that Trump didn’t make a stop at the East Avenue Church. He suggested that the visit was purely politically motivated.

“He’s only doing this because politically, he’s being forced to do it,” Redfern said. “I don’t think he knows how to show empathy, sympathy. I don’t know how else to describe it, but Donald is for Donald.”

Glenn Murray, of Chico, held a similar opinion. Murray, 53, evacuated to the church from Chico on Nov. 8 and even though the evacuation has been lifted from east Chico, he has returned night after night to visit with the friends he made there.

“He realized California has a lot of money and a lot of power,” he said. “He realized he can’t do what he did in Puerto Rico.”

Paradise resident Kimberly Comeau, age 50, who lost her home on Clark Road, had just a few words about the president’s trip.

“Is he going to throw paper towels at us?” she asked.

Probably the weirdest Trump thing on the fires is what we now know as the “Finnish Forest Raking” method of Forest Fire prevention which is another one of those things cooked up from the Dotard’s brain.

You gotta rake it till you make it.

After President Donald Trump suggested Finland has few wildfires because the nation spends a lot of time “raking and cleaning” forest floors, many were confused. Not least of all the Finns themselves — or the Californians Trump was visiting, whose state has been devastated by fires that have killed at least 76 and burned hundreds of thousands of acres in the past two weeks.

But confused or not, Finns took to social media — vacuum at hand — to prove their dedication to their newfound civic duty.

Under the hashtag #haravointi (“raking”), some Finns spent this weekend grabbing their gardening tools — with the more creative types picking up their vacuums and Roomba devices — and visiting the woods to document their public service.

“Just this afternoon I was busy meeting my raking quota,” one tweet reads.

“Taking pride in a good day’s work maintaining the forest,” says another.

The Finns might not have been serious, but the US president seemed to be. During his visit to Northern California Saturday, Trump told reporters that America should follow the lead of Scandinavian nations like Finland, which “spend a lot of time” on forest preservation.

The Finnish President, of course, denies the entire thing.

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said in an interview published Sunday that although President Donald Trump claimed the European leader told him Finns rarely have forest fires because they “spend a lot of time raking,” he doesn’t recall discussing that with Trump when they met last weekend in Paris.

Niinistö told the Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, a CNN affiliate, that the subject of raking was never brought up in his conversations with Trump. He said that they did discuss the California wildfires when they met, and that he told Trump “we take care of our forests.”

The Finnish President told the newspaper that he intended to convey that although Finland is covered by forests, the nation has a good monitoring system which has helped to prevent catastrophic wildfires. He added that he only sees raking in his own yard, and surmised that raking perhaps came to Trump’s mind after he saw firefighters raking some of the burned areas in California.

Still, Trump mentioned raking while surveying the devastation in Northern California on Saturday.

Trump always turns a national disaster into some kind of Monty Python parody of the Minstry of Mayem and Mishap. But, the devastation and loss of life from the fire is real. As usual, the heros are local.

Jeff Evans steers his white Dodge Ram along a narrow dirt road, scanning the blackened trees and ashen ground for two skittish dogs

They come running when they hear the truck, and Evans offers them dog biscuits from the big red box of Milk-Bones he keeps on his floorboard. Good, he said, giving them a pat. They’re doing OK. He can move along.

Checking on the dogs is just one chore on Evans’ list. He’s one of a handful of people left in Concow, Calif., a mountain hamlet tucked deep in the woods that has been under mandatory evacuation orders since the Camp fire tore through here Nov. 8. If he leaves, he can’t get back in.

His neighbors stuck on the outside have been emailing him requests. Because the gas in the generator powering his electricity — and his internet — is limited, he hops online for a few minutes each day, answers their questions and gets going.

“Every single morning until the afternoon, I’m huffing it,” Evans said. “I’m going and going and going. There’s pigs to feed and goats and ducks and chickens.”

Not to mention the eight dogs he’s rescued.

“We’re stuck here anyhow,” he added. “We may as well do something valuable.”

A thin man with a bushy mustache and a quick laugh, Evans, 59, has become an unofficial keeper of Concow. Neighbors send him addresses and ask if he could please go see whether their houses burned down. Almost always, the answer is yes.

From Chico, the nearest city outside the massive evacuation zone, thick smoke obscures the Sierra foothills towns and their devastation.

Okay, this is a story near and dear to my heart because as a fifth grader I started asking my school if I could just opt out of the pledge of allegiance. I felt that there were a lot of nice countries–naming England as one–with flags and similar stated goals. Why not do something like recite the Preamble to the Constitution instead? I remember being being threatened by a Girl Scout Troop leader who thought I shouldn’t be a scout if that’s how I felt.

I do remember suddenly, the pledge disappeared from classrooms in all of the District. I was never sure why though. It could’ve been a visit from my mother or quite likely a District lawyer that showed them they were on the wrong side of the constitution and a SCOTUS decision and any law suit. So, that was around 1966 and you would think since the big court decision was way back in the 1940s that would be that. But, then there is this: “Student who refuses to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance expelled, Texas attorney general backs school” from USA Today.

Months after a student was expelled for refusing to stand for her school’s Pledge of Allegiance, the Texas Attorney General is intervening on the school’s behalf.

The mother of Windfern High School senior India Landry launched a legal battle against the Houston-area school, saying her daughter wasn’t able to practice free speech.

India, now 18, was sent home last year after sitting during the pledge. Her mother, Kizzy Landry, said when she came to pick up India, the school provided little details as to why her daughter was kicked out. Later, the principal told the mother”She can’t come to my school if she won’t stand for the pledge.”

India said she sat during the pledge before this incident, and wasn’t punished.

“I don’t think that the flag is what it says it’s for, for liberty and justice and all that. It’s not obviously what’s going on in America today,” India said last year.

Months after a student was expelled for refusing to stand for her school’s Pledge of Allegiance, the Texas Attorney General is intervening on the school’s behalf.

The mother of Windfern High School senior India Landry launched a legal battle against the Houston-area school, saying her daughter wasn’t able to practice free speech.

India, now 18, was sent home last year after sitting during the pledge. Her mother, Kizzy Landry, said when she came to pick up India, the school provided little details as to why her daughter was kicked out. Later, the principal told the mother”She can’t come to my school if she won’t stand for the pledge.”

India said she sat during the pledge before this incident, and wasn’t punished.

“I don’t think that the flag is what it says it’s for, for liberty and justice and all that. It’s not obviously what’s going on in America today,” India said last year.

There was also a lot of ruckus about this when students started refusing to stand for the pledge during Vietnam War protests. This isn’t a new thing and it’s certainly something that I thought was decided by the courts decades again. But then, everything unconstitutional is now up for debate again. From Lawyers.com:

As far back as 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that requiring all public school students to recite the pledge of allegiance was a violation of their First Amendment rights, because free speech includes the right not to speak against your beliefs (West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)). And as the Court made clear more than 20 years later, public schools must also respect students right to express their opinions through actions (known as “symbolic speech”), as long as they aren’t being too disruptive (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U.S. 503 (1969).)

The Supreme Court hasn’t directly addressed the issue of students refusing to stand for the pledge or the national anthem—clear examples of symbolic speech. But federal appellate courts have agreed that public schools may not force students to stand during the pledge. And just as public schools (including colleges and universities) shouldn’t punish students for exercising their First Amendment rights, they also shouldn’t withhold privileges—like participation in school sports—for the same actions.

Texas is wrong on this but then I assume they’re going to keep dragging it through the court process to see if Trump has stacked the courts enough to get a different result. Some folks will just not be convinced that this country and its people are not their personal christianist pisspot.

So, that’s it for me. I need to get back to grading oh, and maybe some raking around Swamplandia.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →