Lazy Caturday Reads: Winter Solstice Edition
Posted: December 21, 2019 Filed under: just because, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Ben Franklin, caturday, Craig Hall, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, Franklin MA PD, ICE, Icelandic folklore, immigration, impeachment trial, Kathryn Walt Hall, Pete Buttigieg, Stephen Miller, therapy dog, Ukraine aid, whistleblowers, Wine Cave, Winter Solstice, Yule cat 20 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers!!
The Winter Solstice arrives tonight at 11:19 PM. Justin Greiser at The Washington Post: Winter solstice: There’s beauty in the darkest day of the year.
There’s something enchanting about the winter solstice, which arrives this weekend and marks our longest night of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere.
Perhaps it’s the stark contrast between daylight and darkness that we experience when the winter sun is shining and not hiding behind a thick blanket of clouds. Or maybe it’s the fact that the sun hangs so low in the sky all day at this time of year that it almost feels as if our nearest star is within tangible reach, despite being 91 million miles away….
When astronomical winter officially begins, we’ll be less than halfway through our longest night of the year, which lasts more than 14 hours here in Washington. On both Saturday and Sunday, the sun will be up for just nine hours and 26 minutes, rising in the southeastern sky at 7:23 a.m. and setting to the southwest at 4:49 p.m.
I’ve always considered the winter solstice one of my favorite days of the year. Long before the dawn of modern technology, ancient cultures and civilizations have celebrated the winter solstice as a seasonal turning point, welcoming the inevitable return of the sun’s light.
Even in the modern age of technology and artificial lighting, the darkest day of the year forces us to ponder the importance of sunlight in our daily lives. It affects our moods, our productivity and even our sleep patterns. While the dark, gloomy days of winter can trigger seasonal affective disorder in many people, there’s something about the sun’s blinding, golden glow around this time of year that feels bizarrely uplifting.
Yule Cat (Icelandic folklore)
In Icelandic folklore, there are Christmas monsters, one of which is the Yule cat. Smithsonian Magazine: Each Christmas, Iceland’s Yule Cat Takes Fashion Policing to the Extreme.
For most kids who celebrate Christmas, new clothes probably sit just above lumps of coal on the good present scale. But according to an Icelandic tradition, getting new socks before Christmas might just save your life. That’s because the Jólakötturinn, or Yule Cat, eats anyone who hasn’t received new clothes by the time Christmas rolls around, Matthew Hart writes for Nerdist.
The story of the Jólakötturinn likely dates back to the Dark Ages, though the oldest written accounts are from the 19th century. In any case, much like the Krampus, the Yule Cat has long been a Christmas-time enforcer of good behavior, Miss Cellania writes for Mental Floss. According to Icelandic tradition, anyone who finished their chores before Christmas would get new clothes as a reward. Meanwhile, lazy children who didn’t get their work done would have to face the Jólakötturinn.
For starters, the Jólakötturinn is no mere kitten—it towers above the tallest houses. As it prowls about Iceland on Christmas night, the Yule Cat peers in through the windows to see what kids have gotten for presents. If new clothes are among their new possessions, the big cat will move along. But if a child was too lazy to earn their new socks, the Jólakötturinn will eat their dinner, before moving on to the main course: the child herself, Hart writes.
Read more at the link.
I posted this story on the thread yesterday, but I’m doing it again just because: The mystery of the missing police station donation toys has been solved. The thief is very cute.
A Massachusetts police department has a thief in its midst.
Officers with the Franklin Police department had worked diligently to collect toys for needy children this holiday season, but noticed that some of those toys were disappearing, according to CNN affiliate WFXT.
Fortunately, the culprit was caught in the act and on camera. It was their own therapy dog, Ben Franklin.
“When Ben saw the toys, he thought they all belonged to him,” Deputy Chief James Mill told the station.
Among the stolen items was a baby doll.
Ben tried to outrun officers when they caught him carrying a baby doll in its carrier by the handle. But he ended up just leading them back to the stash of goodies by his bed under a desk.
Police were unable to recover the toys from Ben, due to an excess of slobber. Officers have instead replaced the stolen toys, the station reported.
He will likely not face charges, the station said, but he has been banned from the toy room.
I just love that Ben wanted to play with a baby doll.
I hate to have to post actual news today, but I’ll force myself.
A new story at The Daily Beast reveals that the White House is blacking out important information in documents it has been ordered by a judge to release: Trump Administration Officials Worried Halt to Ukraine Aid Violated Spending Law.
When President Donald Trump ordered a halt to aid to Ukraine last summer, defense officials and diplomats worried first that it would undermine U.S. national security. Ukraine is, as some of them later testified before Congress, on the front lines of Russian aggression, and only robust American support would fend off aggressive Moscow meddling in the West. This worry eventually helped galvanize congressional support for one of the two impeachment articles approved by the House of Representatives on Dec. 18.
By Inge Sigrid Micha Koeck
But there was also a separate, less-noticed facet of the internal administration uproar set off by Trump’s July 12 order stopping the flow of $391 million in weapons and security assistance to Ukraine. Some senior administration officials worried that by defying a law ordering that the funds be spent within a defined period, Trump was asking the officials involved to take an action that was not merely unwise but flatly illegal.
The administration so far has declined to release copies of its internal communications about this vital issue—the legality of what Trump had ordered. On Friday, in 146 pages of new documents provided to the Center for Public Integrity under a court order, the Justice Department blacked out —for the second time—many of the substantive passages reflecting what key officials at the Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget said to one another.
But considerable evidence is still available that those at key institutions responsible for distributing the Ukraine aid worried the halt potentially violated a 45-year-old law written to keep presidents from ignoring the will of Congress, according to public statements and congressional testimony.
Click the link to read the rest.
Bloomberg: Trump Quest to Expose Whistle-Blower Hard to Pull Off in Senate.
President Donald Trump says his impeachment trial should deliver on a goal he’s nurtured for months: unmasking the whistle-blower who started it all. But that would pose legal and ethical challenges that would be hard to overcome….
A Senate demand that the whistle-blower testify would probably be challenged in court as a violation of the law’s protections, and as a move that could put the unidentified person at risk while extracting only secondhand evidence of limited value. Lawmakers of both parties may share those concerns….
By Kazuaki Horitomo
Experts on whistle-blower laws say disclosing the person’s identify, as Trump desires, would clash with protections from reprisal under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998.
“Everyone knows that the whistle-blower’s career will be devastated” if identified publicly, said Stephen M. Kohn, who has represented whistle-blowers for more than three decades. “There is no doubt that this whistle-blower will be attacked on social media vigorously and for years to come.”
I didn’t watch the debate, but reportedly one of the big issues was about the “progressive” candidates who have pledged not to hold fundraisers for big donors. Frankly, I think that’s silly as long as Republicans are raking in all the money they can. It only makes it harder for Democrats to compete. Anyway, a very generous donor is insulted. The New York Times: Democrats Sparred Over a Wine Cave Fund-Raiser. Its Billionaire Owner Isn’t Pleased.
To reach the wine cave that set off a firestorm in this week’s Democratic presidential debate, visitors must navigate a hillside shrouded in mossy oak trees and walk down a brick-and-limestone hallway lined with wine barrels. Inside the room, a strikingly long table made of wood and onyx sits below a raindrop chandelier with 1,500 Swarovski crystals.
The furnishings drew the ire of Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on Thursday, when she chastised Pete Buttigieg for holding a recent fund-raiser in a wine cave “full of crystals” where she said guests were served $900 bottles of wine….
Illustration by Théophile Steinlen, ’Compagnie française des chocolats et des thés’ (ca. 1895-1900)
On Friday, the billionaire couple who owns the wine cave — wine is often stored underground because of the cool, stable temperatures — said they were frustrated that their property had set off one of the fiercest back-and-forths of the debate. Watching the contentious moment on television, they grew frustrated as Ms. Warren and other candidates used their winery as a symbol of opulence and the wealthy’s influence on politics.
“I’m just a pawn here,” said Craig Hall, who owns Hall Wines, which is known for its cabernet sauvignon, with his wife, Kathryn Walt Hall. “They’re making me out to be something that’s not true. And they picked the wrong pawn. It’s just not fair.”
Mr. Hall said he had not settled on a favorite Democratic candidate, but that Mr. Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., was a leading contender. His positions on climate change, gun safety and immigration appealed to the couple, said Mr. Hall, who added that he wanted it to be easier for middle-class Americans to start successful businesses.
The Halls have given at least $2.4 million to Democratic candidates, committees and PACs since the 1980s, according to Federal Election Commission records. They have donated to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Kamala Harris of California before she ran for president.
Of course Warren had no problem beginning her campaign with money she got from wealthy donors.
The Washington Post published a shocking immigration story yesterday: Under secret Stephen Miller plan, ICE to use data on migrant children to expand deportation efforts.
The White House sought this month to embed immigration enforcement agents within the U.S. refugee agency that cares for unaccompanied migrant children, part of a long-standing effort to use information from their parents and relatives to target them for deportation, according to six current and former administration officials.
By Utagawa Hiroshige, ‘Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival’ (1857) Japanese
Though senior officials at the Department of Health and Human Services rejected the attempt, they agreed to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to collect fingerprints and other biometric information from adults seeking to claim migrant children at government shelters. If those adults are deemed ineligible to take custody of children, ICE could then use their information to target them for arrest and deportation.
The arrangement appears to circumvent laws that restrict the use of the refugee program for deportation enforcement; Congress has made clear that it does not want those who come forward as potential sponsors of minors in U.S. custody to be frightened away by possible deportation. But, in the reasoning of senior Trump administration officials, adults denied custody of children lose their status as “potential sponsors” and are fair game for arrest.
The plan has not been announced publicly. It was developed by Stephen Miller, President Trump’s top immigration adviser, who has long argued that HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement is being exploited by parents who hire smugglers to bring their children into the United States illegally. The agency manages shelters that care for underage migrants who cross the border without a parent and tries to identify sponsors — typically family members — eligible to take custody of the minors.
Read more at the WaPo.
That’s it for me. What stories are you following today?
Finally Friday Reads: Imagine!
Posted: December 20, 2019 Filed under: just because | Tags: Amy Klobucher, Drag Queen Story Hour, Elizabeth Warren, ICE Detention Centers, Pete Buttigieg 32 Comments
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
It’s that time of year where I play John Lennon’s “Imagine” over and over and hope that an upcoming New Year will see a United States more in keeping with the spirit of the song. We all look for places of refuge and peace. There is a group of Americans trapped in a cult of hate and we must deal with them. Impeachment may move forward. We may see change in 2020 but until we deal with this cult there will be no peace and no justice.
Our country’s biggest sin has always been connected to mass imprisonments, genocides, and enslavement. It seems an odd time of the year to have to reflect on our continuing participation in creating horror for other human beings but we must.
I have two stories with bylines here in New Orleans. My city is known for creating a uniquely American form of culture that includes joyful eating, celebrating, and making music. Yet, we cannot escape the blood on the ground. This is the headline from USA Today that disturbs me beyond any words I can conjure. “Deaths in custody. Sexual violence. Hunger strikes. What we uncovered inside ICE facilities across the US”. (TRIGGER WARNING GRAPHIC)
NEW ORLEANS – At 2:04 p.m. on Oct. 15, a guard at the Richwood Correctional Center noticed an odd smell coming from one of the isolation cells. He opened the door, stepped inside and found the lifeless body of Roylan Hernandez-Diaz hanging from a bedsheet.
The 43-year-old Cuban man had spent five months in immigration detention waiting for a judge to hear his asylum claim. As his time at Richwood dragged on, he barely answered questions from security or medical staff, who noted his “withdrawn emotional state.” He refused to eat for four days.
The day after his death, 20 other detainees carried out what they say was a peaceful protest. They wrote “Justice for Roylan” on their white T-shirts, sat down in the cafeteria and refused to eat. Guards swooped in and attacked, beating one of them so severely he was taken to a hospital, according to letters written by 10 detainees that were obtained by the USA TODAY Network and interviews with two detainees’ relatives.
Before that day, detainees at Richwood had chronicled a pattern of alleged brutality in the Louisiana facility. Detainees complained of beatings, taunts from guards who called them “f—ing dogs” and of landing in isolation cells for minor violations.
You may continue to read the horrifying things happening in this and other ICE Detention Centers if you can stand it. It has a long list of reporters on the byline and they’ve all done their best work.
The White Evangelical Community appears to have some folks that have read the New Testament and are willing to speak up against the Pharisees in their Community. I used to occasionally see copies of Christianity Today floating around my churches or friends. I really had no idea of its history or connection to Billy Graham. We know Franklin Graham has been willing to sell just about anything for earthly gains which is why these headlines today shocked many. From CT: “Trump Should Be Removed from Office. It’s time to say what we said 20 years ago when a president’s character was revealed for what it was.” This came from the pen of Mark Galli.
But the facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.
The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.
Trump’s evangelical supporters have pointed to his Supreme Court nominees, his defense of religious liberty, and his stewardship of the economy, among other things, as achievements that justify their support of the president. We believe the impeachment hearings have made it absolutely clear, in a way the Mueller investigation did not, that President Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath. The impeachment hearings have illuminated the president’s moral deficiencies for all to see. This damages the institution of the presidency, damages the reputation of our country, and damages both the spirit and the future of our people. None of the president’s positives can balance the moral and political danger we face under a leader of such grossly immoral character.
You can read more at the link. Franklin Graham could not leave this alone of course. He posted to FACEBOOK. I assume he can still find a mirror to see if he has a reflection.
Trump also had his say as reported by the AP.
President Donald Trump blasted a prominent Christian magazine on Friday, a day after it published an editorial arguing that he should be removed from office because of his “blackened moral record.”
Trump tweeted that Christianity Today, an evangelical magazine founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham, “would rather have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President.”
The magazine “has been doing poorly and hasn’t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years,” Trump wrote. Some of his strongest evangelical supporters, including Graham’s son, rallied to his side and against the publication. Their pushback underscored Trump’s hold on the evangelical voting bloc that helped propel him into office and suggested the editorial would likely do little to shake that group’s loyalty.
So, tomorrow I will walk a few blocks to my nice little–usually only noisy because of small children–library and do what is done daily at Women’s Clinics around the country. I will stand in a line, smile, and let the little children go hear story time at the library. If some angry white male feels the need to scream, then he can scream at those of us that can deal with it.
This also basically the same pattern. They don’t want anything but what they want for them, theirs, and the rest of us. It gets old.
My friend David Gladow has shared Drag Queen Story Time with his kids. Here are some details in an article from last year. I should also mention that Vanessa is a friend too.
In New Orleans, the story time is the main focus, with traditional children’s books being presented in a fun, engaging way.
The presenter changes from event to event, but is always fun, glittery and a part of the community already. And perhaps more in New Orleans than in most any other city, the concept has been embraced (over 150 people showed up for a recent story time).
In a town that enjoys dressing up more than any other, where costumes are a part of the experience from Mardi Gras to New Year’s and all points in between, having a storyteller wear a costume isn’t exactly a stretch from the daily routine.
The only real message that is stressed is “different is okay.” For the kids, it’s less about “drag” and more about “character.” They see characters in real life and it sparks their imaginations.
The event is about reading stories in a safe environment, having fun, and seeing the entertainers as normal people — but fancier.
Portrait of Felix Fénéon, Opus 217 ,1890, Paul Signac
The photo is of Vanessa and the Alvar Library in my neighborhood captured by the NYT. Come on! What little kid doesn’t like to play dress up and hear stories!
Edie Pasek, who organizes story hour events in and around Milwaukee, said her readings had been “protested like the dickens,” especially in smaller cities like Oak Creek, Wis., and Zion, Ill. But she said she and the performers tried to stay focused on the point of Drag Queen Story Hour.
“We want to teach the kids acceptance, not bullying, learning to make good choices, how to be nice to other people,” she said. “I have a 6-year-old daughter and whatever I think we need to teach her is what we bring to story hour.”
Ms. Pasek said her group holds about a third of its events in libraries and a third in churches, where dozens of children sometimes show up.
“In the Midwest, we do drag in churches,” she said. They also hold events in private venues, like a popular Milwaukee cat cafe. “Let me tell you, people really love cats and drag.”
But protesters tend to show up wherever they go. Sometimes the protests upset the children, who are usually too young to understand the banner and chants, Ms. Pasek said.
She said her performers had developed “a little spiel” to explain all the ruckus to their young audience.
“Normally we say, ‘It’s O.K. to be the way you are, and the people outside are yelling because they don’t want us to be the way we are,’” Ms. Pasek said. “And the kids do the Mr. Rogers thing. They say, ‘We like you just the way you are.’”
Vanessa has already assured me that she will be there. This group has shown up before.
Lucians Strange Creatures – Aubrey Beardsley
So, last night I did watch the debate and had a chance to learn about “wine caves”. The Daily Beast has an interesting take on the exchange between Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttgieg and upscale fund-raisers. These are the kinds of events sworn off by Warren and also by Senator Kamala Harris whose campaign ran dry of funds. This is a discussion really of access to candidates and what that implies. I had no idea that this wine cave has a long history of granting access for Democrats wealthy donors.
The cave in question—more of a wine basement, if you want to get specific, built for storing and aging wine in barrels—has been a gathering place for Democratic politicians long before Warren pointed to it as evidence that Buttigieg is too close with wealthy donors to be able to deny them access, appointments and special favors down the road. Owned by Dallas billionaires Craig and Kathryn Hall, the cave’s fundraisers have benefitted at least a hundred Democrats over the years, in the estimation of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“That cave’s been used by Democrats all across the country for fundraising,” Newsom told reporters in the spin room following Thursday night’s debate. “Probably a hundred congressional representatives have benefited from the use of that.”
After Thursday’s debate, however, the wine cave is serving as an entirely different kind of fundraiser after the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) purchased the domain PetesWineCave.com, which now redirects to Sanders’ donation portal.
Asked if he himself had attended a fundraiser at the wine cave—which, as the Associated Press first reported, features a “Chandelier Room” drowning in crystals—Newsom was straightforward.
“Are you kidding?” Newsom, himself a former vintner, said. “I’m in the business, so I know that place well.”
Other politicians who have attended fundraisers, receptions, and meet-and-greets at the Halls’ wine cave include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as current and former Reps. Leon Panetta, Reps. Ami Bera of California, Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire, Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, and Patrick Murphy of Florida.
The long and lucrative political history of the cave and its owners bolsters Warren’s contention that big-dollar fundraisers have helped pave a path for wealthy financial backers to ask for favors—but also Buttigieg’s defense that everyone on the debate stage has benefited from these types of financial backers, including Warren herself.
I’m not sure what is worse. Self-funding billionaires getting access to debates or Big Bundlers like Kathryn Hall of Wine Cave fame buying access and an ambassadorship. This is surely one example of where we can say both sides do it.
The problem is we’ve lost the voices of many good candidates that should’ve been on that debate stage when donations and name recognition rules the early days of polling and money. The one thing I will say is the only candidate I wrote a check to because I wanted her on the stage is still there. This is from The Atlantic: “Amy Klobuchar Is Still Here. The senator from Minnesota has outlasted flashier candidates, and dominated in last night’s debate. But can she escape the shadow of her nemesis, Pete Buttigieg, who has seized her sensible-midwesterner mantle?”
I asked Klobuchar why she thinks she’s spent the year being overlooked. She joked that it’s because she’s 5 foot 4—James Madison’s height, she then immediately pointed out. “Some people have this image of what they want right now,” she said. “And it’s not necessarily what the American people want right now, what the pundits think people should want right now.”
Klobuchar’s case for being the nominee, aimed right at panic-attack Democrats, is that they’d “better not screw this up.” She warns that the wrong candidate will give voters permission to reelect Donald Trump. She’s directing her pitch at voters like Sandi McIntire, a 68-year-old retired nurse from Ankeny who’s skeptical about the size of the government-funded programs being promised by other candidates. “I don’t know that they should happen,” McIntire told me. “If you get everything for free, you don’t appreciate anything.”
Just a few other things you may want to check out:
ABV NEWS ANNOUNCES TWO-HOUR SPECIAL AND EIGHT-PART PODCAST ON JEFFREY EPSTEIN AND THE WOMEN WHO SURVIVED HIS CRIMES — “Truth and Lies: Jeffrey Epstein” Airs on Thursday, January 9 (9:00 – 11:00 p.m. ET) on ABC and the Podcast Debuts the Same Day
Eric Newcomer / Bloomberg:
The Decade Tech Turned DystopianTom Elliott / Grabien News:
Montage: 12 Most Mortifying Media Moments of 2019
So, what are you imagining today?
You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Moving Backwards Monday: US Diplomacy and Military on the Run
Posted: October 14, 2019 Filed under: just because 32 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
The Acting President* of the United States has just handed a military and diplomatic win to Russia’s Putin, the Iranian Regime, and Putin’s murdering hand puppet in Syria the brutal dictator Assad.
ISIS and former Al Quaeda fighters for Turkey are committing war crimes galore as they slash and murder their way south into Syria in a land grab we haven’t seen for some time. The Assad government is now moving into the area to back up their new allies the Kurds. Did I mention they’re Russian-backed? So, our dumped allies the Kurds are now going to try to stop Turkey who is still a NATO member.
Meanwhile, our troops are in the process of retreating from a hot war in relatively small numbers and scattered in various pockets where they’ve been in embedded with the Kurds with Assad Regime and Russian Forces headed straight at them from one side and Turkey on the other.
From Foreign Affairs and William Burns: “The Demolition of U.S. Diplomacy. Not Since Joe McCarthy Has the State Department Suffered Such a Devastating Blow.”
Our diplomacy is longer carried out by a dedicated, trained and skilled corps of career diplomats, but by the gut feelingd of an autocracy-curious madman.
That Senator McCarthy’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, was also Donald Trump’s lawyer and mentor is one of history’s sad ironies. Trump’s scorched-earth tactics, casual relationship with truth, and contempt for career public service bear more than a passing resemblance to the playbook that Cohn wrote for McCarthy. And when Trump cried out for a “new Roy Cohn” to replace the late original, it was hardly a surprise that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared—or that he dove into the muck of the Ukraine scandal and agitated for the removal of a career ambassador whose integrity and expertise proved to be an obstruction.
One might imagine that the State Department’s leadership would stand up to the president and for its personnel—so many of whom are doing hard jobs in hard places around the world. If only that were the case.
Instead, today’s leaders have shown no more spine than Dulles did. Secretary Pompeo apparently worked around the embassy in Kiev to advance the president’s private agenda, allowed specious opposition research about Yovanovitch to circulate around the department, and sat on his hands as Trump slandered Yovanovitch on the infamous call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and warned ominously that “she’s going to go through some things.” The ghost of Roy Cohn was smiling somewhere.
Even before the Ukraine mess, the Trump administration had been waging a war on diplomacy for nearly three years. The White House regularly pushes historic cuts to diplomacy and development spending, which is already 19 times smaller than the defense budget. Career diplomats are sidelined, with only one of 28 assistant secretary-rank positions filled by a Foreign Service officer, and more ambassadorships going to political appointees in this administration than in any in recent history. One-fifth of ambassadorships remain unfilled, including critical posts.
Not coincidentally, applications to join the Foreign Service have declined precipitously, with fewer people taking the entrance exam in 2019 than in more than two decades. The pace of resignations by career professionals is depressing, the pernicious practice of retaliation against individual officers just because they worked on controversial issues in the last administration is damning, and the silence from the department’s leadership is deafening.
This is news analysis from the New York Times and David E. Sanger.
President Trump’s acquiescence to Turkey’s move to send troops deep inside Syrian territory has in only one week’s time turned into a bloody carnage, forced the abandonment of a successful five-year-long American project to keep the peace on a volatile border, and given an unanticipated victory to four American adversaries: Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and the Islamic State.
Rarely has a presidential decision resulted so immediately in what his own party leaders have described as disastrous consequences for American allies and interests. How this decision happened — springing from an “off-script moment” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, in the words of a senior American diplomat — likely will be debated for years by historians, Middle East experts and conspiracy theorists.
But this much already is clear: Mr. Trump ignored months of warnings from his advisers about what calamities likely would ensue if he followed his instincts to pull back from Syria and abandon America’s longtime allies, the Kurds. He had no Plan B, other than to leave. The only surprise is how swiftly it all collapsed around the president and his depleted, inexperienced foreign policy team.
Day after day, they have been caught off-guard, offering up differing explanations of what Mr. Trump said to Mr. Erdogan, how the United States and its allies might respond, and even whether Turkey remains an American ally. For a while Mr. Trump said he acted because the Islamic State was already defeated, and because he was committed to terminating “endless wars” by pulling American troops out of the Middle East. By the end of the week he added 2,000 — to Saudi Arabia.
One day he was inviting Mr. Erdogan to visit the White House; the next he was threatening to “totally destroy and obliterate” Turkey’s economy if it crossed a line that he never defined.
Mr. Erdogan just kept going.
Mr. Trump’s error, some aides concede in off-the-record conversations, was entering the Oct. 6 call underprepared, and then failing to spell out for Mr. Erdogan the potential consequences — from economic sanctions to a dimunition of Turkey’s alliance with the United States and its standing in NATO. He has since threatened both, retroactively. But it is not clear Mr. Erdogan believes either is a real risk.
The drama is nowhere near over.
The use of the word ‘drama’ here is probably one of the most serious understatements I’ve ever read as I now wake up and go to bed watching mass slaughter that appears to be part of a planned Genocide of the Kurds. It hearkens back to Turkey’s approach to Armenians in the 1920.
Well, it looks like if Trump won’t do it, Putin will.
Moving us out of its client state, Syria, has been a Russian objective for some time. Trump has given him this deliverable.
Key Takeaway: Russia has finished an advanced anti-access/area denial (A2AD) network in Syria that combines its own air defense and electronic warfare systems with modernized equipment formerly commanded by Syria. Russia can use these capabilities to mount a long-term strategic challenge to the U.S. and NATO in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East. Russia is currently positioned to disrupt the U.S. Anti-ISIS Coalition, constrain future military options for the U.S. in Syria, and increase the cost of deterring future malign action by Iran and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Jackson Diehl of WAPO writes “In a month, Trump has destroyed ‘America First’.”
The uproar in Washington over President Trump’s corruption in Ukraine and malfeasance in Syria has obscured a broader story. In little more than a month, virtually every other foreign policy initiative the Trump administration has pursued has imploded — thanks mostly to the president’s increasingly unhinged behavior.
The unraveling started on Sept. 7, when Trump abruptly announced that he had canceled a previously undisclosed summit with the Afghan Taliban due to be held the next day at Camp David, and shelved a draft peace deal that a State Department special envoy had spent a year negotiating. The immediate result was a spike in violence in Afghanistan — and at least the temporary shelving of Trump’s ambition to pull U.S. troops out of the country before the 2020 election.
A week later, Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran came undone. Following an Iranian-
sponsored attack on a Saudi oil complex, Trump ruled out a military response; instead, he told French President Emmanuel Macron that he was open to a plan to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the United Nations and lift sanctions on his government in return for negotiations. The gambit failed: Rouhani left Trump waiting on a phone line. But Saudi Arabia got the message: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has asked Iraq and Pakistan to broker a de-escalation with Tehran.
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From the Dallas Morning News: ; “The outrageous death of Atatiana Jefferson: What was Fort Worth cop possibly thinking when he shot?. It’s a decision that ripped an innocent woman from her family and one that will forever scar her 8-year-old nephew who was with her at the time.”
Atatiana’s life MATTERS and we must work as a country to hold our police to higher standards and to accountants for the number of black lives they take needlessly and without regard.
Video from the cop’s body-camera as he roamed the backyard with a flashlight at 2:30 a.m captures him hollering “Put your hands up. Show me your hands” and then — almost immediately — firing his gun into Jefferson’s window.
Fort Worth police acknowledged Sunday that the cop never identified himself as a police officer before he fired. Along with the video, police released a fuzzy photo of a gun, apparently found in a bedroom, but did not connect it to Jefferson’s death. Their reason for releasing that photo without context provides no confidence in the department’s credibility.
The episode began when James Smith, a concerned resident who, in the middle of the night, spotted open doors and lights on, called the police nonemergency number and asked an officer to check on the household.
The well-meaning Smith is just the sort of neighbor we all would like to have nearby. He followed the common sense that crime watch groups and law enforcement repeat again and again: If you see something, say something. Smith simply wanted the cops to do a “welfare check” to ensure that the family was safe.
A person shouldn’t die as a result of a caring neighbor. In a killing that is sickeningly similar to the one for which fired Dallas police officer Amber Guyger was just sent to prison, the Fort Worth cop seems to have acted without thinking first. In the Dallas case, Guyger killed Botham Jean after mistaking his apartment for her own and thinking he was an intruder.
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I awake daily to thinking that we keep going backwards to days that should be well behind us. I will leave you with a bright spot. There are so many ways that we are reminded that people of color are still provided second class citizenship. Montgomery, Alabama–the city at the very root of the Civil Rights Movement–elected its first black mayor with a plurality that should uplift us all. CNN’s Faith Karimi and LaRell Reynolds write “Montgomery elected its first black mayor in 200 years. This is why it matters”. The struggle continues but it achieved something special with this.
In the two centuries since its founding, Alabama’s capital of Montgomery and the birthplace of the civil rights movement has never had a black mayor.
That changed Tuesday when Montgomery County probate judge Steven Reed won a runoff election to become the first black mayor of the city founded in 1819. He defeated television station owner David Woods by more than 16,000 votes.
“Let the record show tonight, above all … what we can do when we come together in this city and we build around positivity, around opportunity, and all the things that tie us together versus those things that keep us apart,” Reed told supporters at a rally turned victory party.
Alabama’s second-largest city is a city of contrasts. While it’s the birthplace of the civil rights movement, it was also the first capital of the Confederacy early in the Civil War, and many streets and schools still bear Confederate names.
Montgomery later became the site of Rosa Parks’ famed bus boycott in 1955 and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dexter Avenue Baptist church, as well as the destination of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery protest marches that were met with brutal police violence and led to the Voting Rights Act.
Just last year, the nation’s first memorial to the more than 4,000 victims of lynchings was opened in Montgomery.
What’s significant is highlighted by VOX.
On Tuesday evening, 67 percent of voters backed probate judge Steven Reed, who was up against David Woods, a white television station owner, according to unofficial results. In August, the two received the most votes in the city’s mayoral election (Reed was one of 10 black candidates), but neither candidate captured a 50 percent majority, leading to this month’s nonpartisan runoff election.
Reed will be sworn into office in November, replacing current mayor Todd Strange, who has held office since 2009 and did not run for reelection. According to the Montgomery Advertiser, prior to the October election, Montgomery was one of three cities with a population over 100,000 in the Deep South that had never elected a black mayor.
During his mayoral campaign, Reed said he plans to help Montgomery’s poorest communities by addressing issues like food deserts and poor water quality. Reed also wants to improve economic conditions in the city in the hopes of making Montgomery more attractive to younger people and businesses. Montgomery is also currently dealing with a limited city budget, and city officials have dedicated resources in recent years to reduce crime rates in the city.
Reed’s historic win has drawn national attention and praise from civil rights groups. Other politicians have also praised Reed’s victory, with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris tweeting, “The birthplace of the civil rights movement has a new era of leadership for the first time in its 200-year history.”
Another Democratic Candidates debate is open us with a significant number of women and POC still standing and in good position to take the lead.
Here’s hoping we can still make progress eve though I have a feeling that those Trumpers HateFests are going get worse and the news from Syria will be gruesome. Here’s some news that may or may not shorten it.
There will be 12 folks on the debate stage on Tuesday.
On Tuesday night, the top dozen Democratic candidates are set to appear at the party’s fourth 2020 primary debate, set at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, starting at 5 p.m. Pacific. The debate, co-hosted by CNN and the New York Times, will be broadcast on CNN and streamed online at http://www.cnn.com and http://www.nytimes.com, as well as on the outlets’ apps.
The candidates are former Vice President Joe Biden; Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren; Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders; California Sen. Kamala Harris; Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., …
Still going, stay with us …
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas; former Housing Secretary Julián Castro; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii; Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar … and (deep breath) businessmen Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer.
We will have a live blog and I’m certain BB will have some pre-debate news for us. Frankly, I plan to sip my well iced white wine every time I hear some one say “Impeach him”!!! My glass will first be raised to a toast to whoever!
So, let’s keep keeping on and tell me, what’s on your reading and blogging list today?
And I’ll end by sharing the words of the late Great Curtis Mayfield who wrote and recorded this while I was in high school living the Watergate hearings reality and watching the Vietnam carnage on the nightly news. Still rings true, sir …
I’ve only got one
Don’t run from the burdens of women and men
Continue to give, continue to live
For what you know is right
Withdraw from the darkness and look to the light
Where everyone’s free
At least that’s the way it’s supposed to be
We just keep on keeping on
But they too will soon admit
That there’s still a lot of love among us
When we keep on keeping on
When you have your young, remember this song
And our world surroundings, its leaps and bounds
Ups and downs, is reality
Wednesday Morning Open Thread: WTF edition
Posted: October 9, 2019 Filed under: just because | Tags: ISIS, Kurds, Syria, Turkey 73 CommentsTurkey is bombing the shit out of the Kurds.
Our President is a lawless monster who only cares about himself and his interests.
Fresh Hell Friday Reads: The Plot Thickens
Posted: October 4, 2019 Filed under: just because, morning reads | Tags: Felonious Trump, impeachment, Supreme Court 34 Comments
The Sun, 1909 by Edvard Munch
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
Before you do anything today follow the link on this Twitter from Congressman Adam Schiff. Then ask yourself, is Felonious Trump “self impeaching?”
Here Comes the Sun!
There’s nothing I cant think of more today than the bright rays of sunlight pouring into a den of thieves.
The Daily Beast calls these tweets “damning”.
Democratic committee chairmen released a stunning cache of text messages late Thursday night detailing exchanges among senior U.S. diplomats as they went to great lengths to play along with President Trump’s campaign to pressure a foreign government to launch an investigation into his political rival.
The texts laid bare, with great specificity, a coordinated effort among State Department officials and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to compel the new Ukrainian government of Volodymyr Zelensky to publicly commit to investigating a firm tied to former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, thereby making foreign aid contingent on the Ukrainians helping Trump’s re-election efforts.
By September, that effort so alarmed the recently appointed chargé d’affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Bill Taylor, that he called it “crazy” and spiraling toward a “nightmare scenario.” Another Trump appointee, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, insisted Taylor was “incorrect” about Trump dangling a “quid pro quo” before Zelensky—the same quid pro quo that Sondland and his colleagues, from Trump on down, had spent months orchestrating.
“As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Taylor said in a message dated Sept. 9, 2019, referring to the White House decision to mysteriously withhold nearly $400 million in military assistance that Ukraine needs to fight back against Russian forces waging war against the country in the east.
The Washington Post reported that Trump ordered the funds withheld nearly a week before his July 25 phone call with Zelensky, the contents of which were presented in a memo released last week by the White House.
With the Ukrainians alarmed over having their military aid from Washington suddenly frozen, Taylor grew urgent. “The message to the Ukrainians (and Russians) we send with the decision on security assistance is key,” he texted Sondland. “With the hold, we have already shaken their faith in us. Hence my nightmare scenario.”
The letter, which included the text messages, was written jointly by the chairmen of the House committees on intelligence, Oversight and Reform, and Foreign Affairs, and was circulated publicly following a marathon deposition on Capitol Hill from one of the pressure campaign’s key participants, the Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker, whom Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushed into resigning last week.
“These text messages reflect serious concerns raised by a State Department official about the detrimental effects of withholding critical military assistance from Ukraine, and the importance of setting up a meeting between President Trump and the Ukrainian president without further delay,” the chairmen wrote. “He also directly expressed concerns that this critical military assistance and the meeting between the two presidents were being withheld in order to place additional pressure on Ukraine to deliver on the president’s demand for Ukraine to launch politically motivated investigations.”
Edward Hopper, People in the Sun, 1960, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., 1969.47.61
As to the “self-impeaching” question, here’s some thoughts on that from Susan Glasser at The New Yorker. Today’s headlies are filled with takes on the calls from Trump on the White House Driveway for both Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens. Glasser documents the Orange Snot Blob’s further descent into madness. We need to get rid Felonious Trump and all his thugs.
In the ten days since the House of Representatives launched its impeachment inquiry, President Trump has spoken and tweeted thousands of words in public. He has called the investigation a “coup” and the press “deranged.” He has demanded that his chief congressional antagonist, the California representative he demeans as “Liddle’ Adam Schiff,” be brought up on treason charges. He has attacked the “Do Nothing Democrats” for wasting “everyone’s time and energy on bullshit.”
There have been so many rationales coming from the President that it’s been hard to keep them straight. “How do you impeach a President who has created the greatest Economy in the history of our Country, entirely rebuilt our Military into the most powerful it has ever been, Cut Record Taxes & Regulations, fixed the VA & gotten Choice for our Vets (after 45 years), & so much more,” he complained via tweet last week, in a less-than-accurate recap of his Administration’s record. He called the charges against him a “hoax” and, quoting his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, said that he was “framed by the Democrats.” He has blamed the “#Fakewhistleblower” and the “fake news” for the impeachment investigation, which has now replaced the Mueller investigation in Trump’s rhetoric as “the Greatest Witch Hunt in the history of our country.” Trump has also insisted, over and over again, that there was nothing at all wrong with his July 25th phone call with the President of Ukraine. The call—in which he asked for the “favor” of having Ukraine investigate his 2020 political rival, the former Vice-President Joe Biden, even as he was holding up hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid—triggered the impeachment inquiry in the first place. But Trump says it was “perfect.”
On Thursday morning, Trump appeared to dispense with excuses altogether, no longer even bothering to contest the charge that he leaned on Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son Hunter. How do we know this? Because Trump did it again, live on camera, from the White House lawn. In a demand that is hard to interpret as anything other than a request to a foreign country to interfere in the U.S. election, Trump told reporters that Ukraine needs a “major investigation” into the Bidens. “I would certainly recommend that of Ukraine,” the President added, shouting over the noise of his helicopter, as he prepared to board Marine One en route to Florida. He also volunteered, without being asked, that China “should start an investigation into the Bidens,” too, given that Hunter Biden also had business dealings there while his father was in office. Trump, minutes after threatening an escalation in his trade war with China, suggested that he might even personally raise the matter of the Bidens with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping.
Impressions Sunrise, Claude Monet circa 1872
Even the NYT editorial board considers his actions to be self-impeaching. Trump seems to think if he admits it enough in broad daylight that we’ll become immune to the idea that it’s illegal. Or perhaps he thinks–like Nixon–it’s not illegal when the President does it.
Federal law expressly states that it is illegal for “a person to solicit, accept, or receive” anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a United States election.
Yet there stood President Trump outside the White House on Thursday, openly soliciting help from a foreign government for his re-election prospects by declaring to the assembled press that “China should start an investigation into the Bidens.” This, of course, after Mr. Trump has already become subject to an impeachment inquiry after implicating himself in a scheme to seek foreign help for his campaign in a conversation with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
This might seem self-defeating — “self-impeaching,” even. A United States president urging a foreign government to investigate his political rival would seem to be flagrantly violating the law, along with American notions of fair play and decency.
But this president is a master at what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan called defining deviancy down. One baldfaced presidential lie, once exposed, is an outrage; a thousand such lies is a statistic.
Piet Mondrian – Windmill in Sunlight 1908
Today, horrible legislation signed by the Democratic Louisiana Governor will be heard by a Supreme Court that may go directly for Roe. V. Wade. This is from Robert Barnes of WAPO.
The Supreme Court will review a restrictive Louisiana law that gives the justices the chance to reconsider a recent ruling protecting abortion rights.
The court said Friday it would consider whether the 2014 law requiring doctors at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals unduly burdens women’s access to abortion. Clinic owners said the effect of the law would be to close most of the state’s abortion clinics and leave the state with only one doctor eligible to perform the procedure.
The law is almost identical to a Texas law that the Supreme Court struck down in 2016. But in that case, now retired justice Anthony M. Kennedy joined the court’s four liberals to form a majority. Since then, President Trump has added two new justices who were enthusiastically supported by antiabortion groups.
The court could uphold or overturn that 2016 precedent or distinguish it in a way that a restriction deemed unconstitutional in one state is allowed in another.
It was not a surprise the court accepted the case. Last February, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s liberals entered a stay that kept the law from going into effect.
The court’s 2016 decision in the Texas case said the admitting-privileges requirement “provides few, if any, health benefits for women, poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions, and constitutes an ‘undue burden’ on their constitutional right to do so.”
Hospitalization after an abortion is rare, all sides agree, and the lack of admitting privileges by the doctor who performed the procedure is not a bar to the woman getting needed medical care. Roberts was one of the dissenters in the 5 to 3 decision.
After the Deluge (also known as The Forty-First Day) George Frederic Watts, first exhibited as The Sun in an incomplete form in 1886 and completed in 1891
Mark Joseph Stern–writing for Slate– believes that the 2020 court will take a hard right to “launch a conservative revolution.” I’m not surprised the American Women will be its first victims as white men start asserting their property rights over every one that’s not them.
After Brett Kavanaugh joined the Supreme Court in October 2018, most of the justices seemed eager to do whatever they could to keep SCOTUS out of the limelight. Less than two weeks earlier, Christine Blasey Ford had declared on live TV that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her as a teenager; Kavanaugh, in response, accused Democrats of orchestrating a “grotesque character assassination” driven by “pent-up anger about President Trump” and “revenge on behalf of the Clintons.”
The Supreme Court’s legitimacy rests in large part on the perception it is a nonpartisan institution, but Kavanaugh joined the bench engulfed in a toxic cloud of political rancor. In the year after the ugly confirmation hearing, the justices mostly kept their heads down, ducking many controversial cases for no apparent reason. They decided only two bona fide blockbusters, throwing partisan gerrymandering claims out of federal court and blocking the census citizenship question. Meanwhile, they dodged cases about Dreamers, abortion, religious freedom, and discrimination, effectively deciding not to decide.
But the Supreme Court has amassed far too much power to avoid any contentious issue for long. As Congress remains deadlocked and the White House melts down, SCOTUS has become the only fully functioning branch of the federal government. It has taken on the role of policymaker, obligated to resolve many of the battles that engulf the political branches. Republicans understand this fact, and it is a key reason why they fought so hard for Kavanaugh’s confirmation. With lawmakers paralyzed, momentous disputes wind up at the Supreme Court. And now, thanks to Kavanaugh’s vote, many of these battles will be decided by a 5–4 conservative majority.
A slew of potentially earthshaking cases has already piled up on the court’s docket for the upcoming term. Multiple transformative decisions will come down in June, thrusting the court into the middle of the 2020 presidential campaign. And the full impact of Kavanaugh’s appointment will become clear as the court is dragged further to the right. This jurisprudential bloodbath will heighten the stakes of the 2020 race, amplifying the power of the president and the role of the judiciary in the most explosive political fights of the day.
I just need to remind you that three of these judges do not belong on the court. There’s not enough sunlight in the world that will change that.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today? I am assuming more stuff is out there and will be out there. Post what you find down thread! Thanks
Impeach Felonious Trump!
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