Candidates stepped into the void. Pete Buttigieg went first by claiming victory — misleadingly, in the view of Bernie Sanders, whose campaign responded by releasing unofficial figures showing his strength. Amy Klobuchar also joined in by citing unverified results she said demonstrated a robust performance.
Terrible Tuesday Reads: Iowa’s Chaotic Meltdown, Clusterf#ck, Sh#tshow
Posted: February 4, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2020, Bernie Sanders, David Enrich, DeMoines Register poll, Deutche Bank, DNC, Donald Trump, Iowa Caucuses 34 Comments
Rainy Day, Columbus Avenue, Boston, by Frederick Child Hassam
Good Morning!!
Can we please stop letting Iowa go first now?
Eric Levitz at New York Magazine: R.I.P. the ‘First-In-the-Nation’ Iowa Caucuses (1972-2020).
The “first-in-the-nation” Iowa caucuses died Monday night after a protracted battle with advanced-stage omnishambles.
DeMoines Skyline by Buffalo Bonker
Or so we can hope. Iowa’s eccentric, endearing — and wildly anti-democratic — nominating contest has always been an indefensible institution. There is no reason why the most politically-engaged and/or time-rich citizens of America’s 31st most populous state should have the power to veto presidential candidates before anyone else in the country has a say. And yet, few of Iowa’s bitterest critics ever dreamed it would subject the country to something like this.
As of this writing, we are one hour into Tuesday morning and only a small fraction of Iowa precincts have reported their results. Officials currently say that they hope to have the numbers by “some time Tuesday.” The ostensible reasons for this are twofold. 1) This year, for the first time ever, the Iowa Democratic Party was required to report three distinct sets of results — the vote tally on “first alignment,” the vote tally on “final alignment” (when backers of candidates who lack 15% support redistribute their votes to higher-polling candidates), and the final delegate tally. In the past, the party was only on the hook for that last metric, which is much easier to tabulate. 2) To ease the burden of logging all this information from more than 1,600 precincts, the party developed an app for reporting results — which many precinct chairs could not figure out how to use. Thus, they began calling in the results on a telephone hotline. Much waiting on hold ensued.
Guess who pushed for the changes in the vote counting and reporting?
Politico: ‘It’s a total meltdown’: Confusion seizes Iowa as officials struggle to report results.
No results had been reported by midnight Eastern, and two campaigns told POLITICO that after a conference call with the Iowa Democratic Party, they didn’t expect any returns until Tuesday morning at the earliest.
Edward Hopper cityscape
The biggest “winner” might have been Joe Biden. According to the Iowa entrance poll, he was hovering close to the viability threshold of 15 percent statewide. But the questions surrounding the vote-counting served to obscure a potentially poor performance. The former vice president, facing potentially ugly headlines going into New Hampshire and beyond, couldn’t get out of Iowa fast enough.
“We’re going to walk out of here with our share of delegates,” Biden declared to a packed room on the Drake University campus. “It’s on to New Hampshire!”
Conversely, it might have delivered a blow to Sanders and Buttigieg, who appeared on track to do well in the state. Whether the victor turns out to be Sanders or Buttigieg or someone else, that candidate was denied the chance to give an election night victory speech to a nationwide audience — a springboard heading into New Hampshire.
Read more at Politico.
The New York Times:
The app that the Iowa Democratic Party commissioned to tabulate and report results from the caucuses on Monday was not properly tested at a statewide scale, said people who were briefed on the app by the state party.
It was quickly put together in just the past two months, said the people, some of whom asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Life in the Suburbs, by Leonard Koscianski
And the party decided to use the app only after another proposal for reporting votes — which entailed having caucus participants call in their votes over the phone — was abandoned, on the advice of Democratic National Committee officials, according to David Jefferson, a board member of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization.
And let’s not forget what happened with the final Iowa poll. Ben Smith at Buzzfeed News: This Iowa Poll Was Never Published. It’s Still Influencing What You Read.
The Des Moines Register spiked its poll Saturday night, but by the next day it seemed most reporters here had seen the numbers — or something purporting to be the numbers.
Here’s what happened: As the Des Moines Register readied a cover story and CNN prepped for an hourlong special about the time-honored poll, Pete Buttigieg’s campaign complained that his name hadn’t been offered to some poll recipients. The pollster, Ann Selzer, quickly discovered the glitch in a Florida call center that triggered the error. It seemed likely to be just a minor error — but everyone involved cares about their reputation for trustworthiness, and they quickly decided to pull the poll rather than publish with doubts.
But the news organizations had already been preparing to publish the numbers, and a version of them began to circulate almost instantly. I won’t print those numbers: I haven’t been able to confirm that the numbers I’ve seen are the already-questionable official ones.
And yet, most veterans of coverage here trust Selzer’s surveys. So many acknowledged to me last night that they’d quietly taken the unreleased and possibly wrong numbers into account.
“Nobody was talking about Elizabeth Warren and now everybody thinks she has a shot because of those numbers,” said Rebecca Katz, a progressive political consultant who supports Warren. (It’s not the only reason, I should note: Other polls this week also showed Warren in a strong position, as did the last published Selzer poll in January.)
Read more at the link.
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight: Iowa Might Have Screwed Up The Whole Nomination Process.
In trying to build a forecast model of the Democratic primaries, we literally had to think about the entire process from start (Iowa) to finish (the Virgin Islands on June 6). Actually, we had to do more than that. Since the nomination process is sequential — states vote one at a time rather than all at once — we had to determine, empirically, how much the results of one state can affect the rest.
By Ron Francis
The answer in the case of Iowa is that it matters a lot. Despite its demographic non-representativeness, and the quirks of the caucuses process, the amount of media coverage the state gets makes it far more valuable a prize than you’d assume from the fact that it only accounts for 41 of the Democrats’ 3,979 pledged delegates.
More specifically, we estimate — based on testing how much the results in various states have historically changed the candidates’ position in national polls — that Iowa was the second most-important date on the calendar this year, trailing only Super Tuesday. It was worth the equivalent of almost 800 delegates, about 20 times its actual number.
Everything was a little weird in Iowa this year, however. And there were already some signs that the Iowa bounce — which essentially results from all the favorable media coverage that winning candidates get — might be smaller than normal….
But we weren’t prepared for what actually happened, which is that — as I’m writing this at 3:15 a.m. on Tuesday — the Iowa Democratic Party literally hasn’t released any results from its caucuses. I’m not going to predict what those numbers will eventually be, although early indications are that Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and perhaps Elizabeth Warren had good results. The point is that the lead story around the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses is now — and will forever be — the colossal shitshow around the failure to release results in a timely fashion.
In other news, The New York Times Magazine has published an article adapted from David Enrich’s forthcoming book about Trump and Deutche Bank: The Money Behind Trump’s Money. The inside story of the president and Deutsche Bank, his lender of last resort. It’s very long and involved, but here’s a brief excerpt:
George Grosz, Street Scene
Last April, congressional Democrats subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for its records on Trump, his family members and his businesses. The Trump family sued to block the bank from complying; after two federal courts ruled against the Trumps, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case, with oral arguments expected in the spring. State prosecutors, meanwhile, are investigating the bank’s ties with Trump, too. The F.B.I. has been conducting its own wide-ranging investigation of Deutsche Bank, and people connected to the bank told me they have been interviewed by special agents about aspects of the Trump relationship.
If they ever become public, the bank’s Trump records could serve as a Rosetta Stone to decode the president’s finances. Executives told me that the bank has, or at one point had, portions of Trump’s personal federal income tax returns going back to around 2011. (Deutsche Bank lawyers told a federal court last year that the bank does not have those returns; it is unclear what happened to them. The Trump Organization did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) The bank has documents detailing the finances and operations of his businesses. And it has records about internal deliberations over whether and how to do business with Trump — a paper trail that most likely reflects some bank employees’ concerns about potentially suspicious transactions that they detected in the family’s accounts.
One reason all these files could be so illuminating is that the bank’s relationship with Trump extended well beyond making simple loans. Deutsche Bank managed tens of millions of dollars of Trump’s personal assets. The bank also furnished him with other services that have not previously been reported: providing sophisticated financial instruments that shielded him from risks and outside scrutiny, and making introductions to wealthy Russians who were interested in investing in Western real estate. If Trump cheated on his taxes, Deutsche Bank would probably know. If his net worth is measured in millions, not billions, Deutsche Bank would probably know. If he secretly got money from the Kremlin, Deutsche Bank would probably know.
Also, Trump will give his fake state of the union address tonight, and I won’t be watching. What are you thinking and reading today?
Manic Monday Reads: Iowa Caucus Day, Senate Gasbaggery and When will he take the sharpie to Missouri?
Posted: February 3, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, morning reads | Tags: Athenian Curse Tablets, impeachment gasbaggery, Iowa Caucuses, Kansas City 32 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I think I could have a new hobby from what’s evidently a very old practice! Ever heard of curse tablets? Well, it’s an Athenian thing and maybe we should bring it back! I keep a list of graves I intend to dance upon nips and clits up. (.e.g. Phyllis Schafly, Jerry Falwell and his spawn, Billy Graham and his spawn, you know the usual evil suspects). But, an Athenian curse tablet seems much more righteous and long lasting!
Thirty lead tablets engraved with curses have been discovered at the bottom of a 2,500 year old well in ancient Athens. Discovered in the area of Kerameikos, ancient Athens’ main burial ground, the small tablets invoked the gods of the underworld in order to cause harm to others.
These curses were ritual texts, usually scratched on small lead objects. “The person that ordered a curse is never mentioned by name, only the recipient,” observes Dr. Jutta Stroszeck, director of the Kerameikos excavation on behalf of the German Archaeological Institute in Athens.
Before the discovery of the 30 specimens in the well, dozens of curses from the classical period (480-323 B.C.E.) had been found mainly in tombs of dead people who had died in an untimely manner and were therefore thought suitable to carry the spell to the underworld. One had also been found in another well. But there was good reason for the transition of ill-will from graves to wells in ancient Athens.
The well where the curses were found was excavated in 2016 by a team under Stroszeck’s direction while investigating the water supply to a bathhouse about 60 meters beyond the Dipylon – the city-gate on the ro to the Academy. It was a public bathhouse, not a private one, that operated from Classical to Hellenistic times, the fifth to the first centuries B.C.E., and is thought to be the spa referred to by the comic playwright Aristophanes (Knights, 1307-1401). It was also mentioned in a speech by the 4th century B.C.E. Greek rhetorician Isaeus (against Kalydon, fragment 24).
So, as the Senate debates impeachment today … well, wait that might not be a good description. It’s more like as the Republicans spout noxious talking points while the Democratic Party folks beg for something akin to constitutional justice. So, as to whatever that thing is today that’s on TV with so much gasbaggery … consider finding the nearest well! We could start a thing!
I do have a well under my house so maybe I should consider digging the fill out for my new hobby. Those old holier than God dudes might be dancing with the devil now but their horrid sons are still plaguing the world. And of course, we know who needs to go to a devil waiting with millions of hints about what to do with him! He certainly showed Kansas last night that they were just fly over country! Or did he show the Show Me State of Missouri?
Here’s the headline via the Kansas City Star: “Trump congratulates Chiefs for representing ‘the Great State of Kansas.” My mom used to actually write for this paper believe it or not! Most of that side of my family is still all around the place although most now live on the Kansas side of State Line Road. Which reminds me to tell you that State Line is of the interesting roads ever! It used to be a stretch of road where of confederate Missouri folk frequently yelled obscene things at the folks from the Free State of Kansas and it’s aslo got Joe’s Kansas City BBQ! I’m as unlikely to go to or watch a football game as I am to enter a church any time in the near future but I do admit that this got a huge chuckle from me. Such a stable genius!
President Donald Trump congratulated the Missouri-based Kansas City Chiefs for representing the state of Kansas after they won the Super Bowl Sunday night.
In a tweet that apparently disappeared — but was captured in screengrabs — Trump wrote: “Congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs on a great game, and a fantastic comeback, under immense pressure. You represented the Great State of Kansas and, in fact, the entire USA, so very well. Our Country is PROUD OF YOU!”
We all know geography is no part of his very stable genius but to be President of a country should mean you know something about its biggest cities! At least you think that would be a skill set you’d develop after three years or so. Let’s hope Kansas and Missouri remember this coming election!
And, just to get you juiced up for those curse tablets! Here’s the guy that really really needs a billion or so sent so everything i hell is waiting for him! I should hope the world doesn’t act like his church because that would look a lot like hell! Just think what will happen to all those kids of they think all those over 40 mothers and grandmothers can dance!!!!
So, I should probably mention another state around there that I spent an awful lot of time in given my Dad owned a business there for over 30 years! That would be the Iowa caucuses
While Iowa’s always held a caucus, their popularity is only about 50 years old. So what has changed over the years?
There are two men that historians refer to for as to why the Iowa Caucuses are so popular. That’s George McGovern and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Both of them used first in the nation status as a way to show their strength as a candidate.
It all started in the 1970s.
“In 1976, when Jimmy Carter was here, these were very small events,” David Yepsen, of Iowa PBS, said.
A living room, church basements: those were the kinds of places where Iowans met candidates 50 years ago, offering a sense of charm in politics.
“I think the candidates like to try and recreate it, but the thing has gotten so big that they can’t,” Yepsen said.
Yepsen is a long-time journalist who started his career in the 70s, just as the caucuses were gaining fame. The democratic party was in the midst of reforms, so Iowa wound up going first. It wasn’t for any specific reason. That’s just how it happened.
Through the years, the Iowa caucuses predict a party’s nominee correctly about half of the time.
Usually though, the one who wins the presidency does well in the Hawkeye state.
“The only time that a candidate has not finished in the top three and has gone onto win the presidency was 1992,” Leo Landis, curator of the State Historical Society of Iowa, said. “That was when Senator Harkin was running and Bill Clinton comes in 4th.”
Here’s some Iowa Caucus Day Reads!
Ronald Brownstein / The Atlantic: “2020 Democrats Are Bringing Butter Knives to a Gunfight”
Heading into tonight’s Iowa caucus, the clock may be ticking faster on the Democratic presidential candidates than they believe.
All of the leading contenders have campaigned energetically and extensively across the state during the past few days, but none have moved to sharply contrast themselves with their rivals.
None of the candidates have offered a sustained challenge to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has surged to the lead in most Iowa polls and delivered an impressive show of strength on Saturday night with a raucous rally here that attracted some 3,000 people. Nor has former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, or Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota delivered much of an argument against former Vice President Joe Biden, though he leads them in the competition for moderate voters. “I think this is a pillow fight compared to previous caucuses,” says Jeff Link, a longtime Democratic strategist in Iowa.
This restraint partly reflects a widespread belief in Democratic circles that in a multi-candidate field, a conflict between any two candidates hurts both of them and opens a pathway for another contender to win. That’s famously what happened in the 2004 Iowa caucus, when the scorched-earth hostilities between former Representative Richard Gephardt of Missouri and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean allowed John Kerry to make a late surge, winning the state and, ultimately, the nomination.
NBC News: “The stakes for Biden tonight in Iowa are enormous”
No one has more at stake tonight than Joe Biden.
A first-place finish in the Iowa caucuses here could put him the driver’s seat to win the Democratic nomination; a fourth-place finish could end his political career.
No other Top 4 Democrat has that wide range of possibilities.
Pete Buttigieg admitted on “Meet the Press” yesterday that he needs a strong showing to vault him to the later states, but finishing fourth wouldn’t end his political career (he’s just 38 years old).
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren could very well win tonight, but that wouldn’t put them in the driver’s seat for the nomination — at least not yet.
As Democratic candidates began a last-minute blitz across Iowa on Friday evening, nearly a dozen men gathered in a cavernous YMCA meeting room in downtown Des Moines to have a conversation that felt a universe removed from the 2020 race.
They were part of one of the largest groups shut out of Monday’s caucus: people with felony convictions. Iowans are barred from voting for life once they commit a felony, and people can’t vote even if they committed a crime decades ago. The state’s policy, one of the strictest in the country, means more than 42,000 Iowans out of prison won’t have a say in choosing a presidential candidate. Almost 10% of the black voting-age population can’t vote because of a felony conviction.
For decades, the Iowa caucuses have marked the beginning of the presidential primary, and often set the tone for the election year. But the event has come under increasing scrutiny for giving some voters – namely white and wealthy Iowans – outsized power in choosing the president in a state that’s already more than 90% white. Meanwhile, the physical and legal barriers built into the structure of the caucuses leave out large swaths of the population, whether they are disabled, work long hours, or were once convicted of a crime.
So, why does Iowa still go first? And given that many newly enfranchised Iowans that work the local stock yards and do construction work along with plenty of other Iowa type things have their heritage South of our border … what does Iowa think about this?
And there is the whiff of Troll in the Iowa air …
Anyway, this week will be wild. Stock up on whatever gives you comfort!
And, what’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads: Seek Comfort In Simple Things.
Posted: February 1, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 19 Comments
Merchant’s Wife Drinking Tea (in the company of her cat) 1920, Boris Kustodiev
Good Morning!!
As we grieve over the potential death of American democracy, Bernie Sanders and his supporters prepare to dance on its grave.
Alongside Tlaib, Rep. Pramila Jayapal laughed at the hilarious joke. We need to do everything we can to ensure that Sanders does not win the Democratic nomination. If the choice is between two nasty authoritarians, I will have to stay home on election day. As long as there is an electoral college, my vote doesn’t matter anyway–not in the blue state of Massachusetts.
This weekend I’m going to focus on calming and de-stressing.
One way to do that is to drink tea and read a novel that takes me to another place and time.
Did you know that tea contains a rare amino acid that reduces stress?
This amino acid is called theanine. There are numerous studies showing that people who take theanine supplements consistently have lower levels of stress. And when you combine theanine with caffeine, it helps to boost your brain activity as well as your mood.
Cooper&Gorfer, Niza and the White Cat, 2015
It is this boost in mood and brain activity that gives us this sense of relaxation and well being that only tea can provide….
Theanine is only found in tea and a very rare species of mushrooms that people do not regularly eat. So, if you are into getting your supplements naturally, tea is the only common way to get a good dose of theanine….
When we are sick our immune systems need a bit of a boost, especially at the onset of a cold. Tea is packed with antioxidants that help our immune systems fight off different viruses that love to make us feel terrible. In addition, theanine has been shown to help boost our white blood cell count, which is another way to prevent illness.
Another way to find comfort is with animal friends. BBC: Your cat can pick up on how you are feeling.
New research has found the first strong evidence that cats are sensitive to human emotional gestures.
Moriah Galvan and Jennifer Vonk of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, US studied 12 cats and their owners. They found that the animals behaved differently when their owner was smiling compared to when they were frowning.
May and the Cat by Valentine Cameron Princep, British, 1838-1904
When faced with a smiling owner, the cats were significantly more likely to perform “positive” behaviours such as purring, rubbing or sitting on their owner’s lap. They also seemed to want to spend more time close to their owner when they were smiling than when the owner was frowning.
The pattern was completely different when the 12 cats were presented with strangers, instead of their owners. In this setup, they showed the same amount of positive behaviour, regardless of whether the person was smiling or frowning.
The results suggest two things: cats can read human facial expressions, and they learn this ability over time.
Anyone who has ever had a cat knows this from experience. Having a cat cuddle up to you when you’re sad can provide a great deal of comfort.
Here are a few news and opinion articles to check out today.
The New York Times Editorial Board: A Dishonorable Senate. Republican legislators abdicated their duty by refusing to seek the truth.
Alas, no one ever lost money betting on the cynicism of today’s congressional Republicans. On Friday evening, Republican senators voted in near lock step to block testimony from any new witnesses or the production of any new documents, a vote that was tantamount to an acquittal of the impeachment charges against President Trump. The move can only embolden the president to cheat in the 2020 election.
Leonore Fini, Argentine, 1907-1996
The vote also brings the nation face to face with the reality that the Senate has become nothing more than an arena for the most base and brutal — and stupid — power politics. Faced with credible evidence that a president was abusing his powers, it would not muster the institutional self-respect to even investigate.
The week began with such promise, or at least with the possibility the Senate might not abdicate its constitutional duty. Leaks from John Bolton’s forthcoming book about his time in the White House appeared to confirm the core of the impeachment case against Mr. Trump: his extortion of Ukraine by explicitly conditioning hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid on the announcement of investigations into his political rival.
For a moment, it seemed that enough Senate Republicans would come to their senses, listen to the overwhelming majority of Americans, and demand to hear testimony under oath from Mr. Bolton and maybe even other key witnesses to Mr. Trump’s Ukraine scheme.
I never really expected that.
The Washington Post Editorial Board: The cringing abdication of Senate Republicans.
REPUBLICAN SENATORS who voted Friday to suppress known but unexamined evidence of President Trump’s wrongdoing at his Senate trial must have calculated that the wrath of a vindictive president is more dangerous than the sensible judgment of the American people, who, polls showed, overwhelmingly favored the summoning of witnesses. That’s almost the only way to understand how the Republicans could have chosen to deny themselves and the public the firsthand account of former national security adviser John Bolton, and perhaps others, on how Mr. Trump sought to extort political favors from Ukraine.
Carol Willink, Wilma with her cat, c.1940
The public explanations the senators offered were so weak and contradictory as to reveal themselves as pretexts. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she weighed supporting “additional witnesses and documents, to cure the shortcomings” of the House’s impeachment process, but decided against doing so. Apparently she preferred a bad trial to a better one — but she did assure us that she felt “sad” that “the Congress has failed.”
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said the case against Mr. Trump had already been proved, so no further testimony was needed. But he also said, without explanation, that Mr. Trump’s “inappropriate” conduct did not merit removal from office; voters, he said, should render a verdict in the coming presidential election. How could he measure the seriousness of Mr. Trump’s wrongdoing without hearing Mr. Bolton’s firsthand testimony of the president’s motives and intentions, including about whether the president is likely to seek additional improper foreign intervention in that same election?
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) echoed Mr. Alexander’s illogic, only he lacked the courage even to take a position on whether Mr. Trump had, as charged, tried to force Ukraine’s new president to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, or whether that was wrong. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) managed to be even more timorous, telling reporters that “Lamar speaks for lots and lots of us” and refusing to elaborate.
So cowed are most of those “lots and lots” of Republicans that few of them dared to go as far as Mr. Sasse. Some have echoed the president’s indefensible claims that there was nothing wrong with the pressure campaign. Their votes against witnesses have rendered the trial a farce and made conviction the only choice for senators who honor the Constitution.
Paul Waldman at The Washington Post: What Democrats must do when impeachment is over.
Not long after you read this, Republicans in the Senate will likely complete their task, enact their profile in cowardice and close down the impeachment trial of Donald Trump with a proclamation that the president, should he be a Republican, can betray his office in any manner he pleases without consequence.
Woman with Cat by Lilla Cabot Perry, (1848-1933)
So now Democrats have a choice to make. They can slink off miserably and await Trump’s reelection, or they can keep fighting to create the accountability that impeachment was supposed to be about….
The first thing they can do is invite John Bolton to testify in an open hearing before either the Intelligence Committee or the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House (and if he declines the invitation, subpoena him). The fact that Senate Republicans stopped him from testifying in the impeachment trial doesn’t mean he’s barred from opening his mouth forevermore. So let’s hear what he has to say….
But that’s just the beginning. Democrats should also make it a top priority to finally get hold of Trump’s tax returns. Granted, this isn’t entirely in their hands — there are multiple cases in the courts in which Trump is trying to keep them hidden with all the desperation of a cornered mongoose. But the idea that we could go into a second Trump election without knowing where he’s getting money from, to whom he owes money, and what kind of possible tax fraud he might be engaged in is absolutely ludicrous.
So the tax return issue should be part of a broad initiative aimed at exposing and highlighting Trump’s personal corruption and self-dealing. For instance, why have there been no hearings on Trump’s aborted effort to award himself a multimillion-dollar contract to host the Group of Seven summit? Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney claimed that the Secret Service concluded that Trump’s faltering Miami golf club was “far and away the best physical facility for this meeting” in the entire country, which is almost certainly a lie. So let’s find out: Get whoever was running the planning under oath and start asking questions.
ABC reports on Mike Pompeo’s smirking visit to Ukraine: In Kyiv, Pompeo does not dispute allegations in Bolton’s book.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declined to directly dispute allegations reportedly contained in an unpublished manuscript of former national security adviser John Bolton’s forthcoming book, saying he would not comment on press reports “off in the lands of the hypothetical.”
John White Alexander, American, 1856-1915
The New York Times reported in recent days that Bolton’s unpublished manuscript contains allegations that President Donald Trump sought to withhold military aid to Ukraine as leverage to pressure Kyiv to announce investigations into the president’s domestic political opponents.
In Kyiv on Friday, Pompeo downplayed the report’s credibility — but did not explicitly deny its contents.
“So you’re now commenting on reports on an alleged book about notes that someone claims to have seen,” Pompeo said Friday during an interview with ABC News’ Kyra Phillips in Kyiv. “I don’t engage in that. I’ve said everything I have to say about what took place.”
We’ll just see about that won’t we Mr. Smirky.
Miami Herald: Opera singer danced on an SUV, then crashed through Mar-a-Lago barricades. Cops opened fire.
A Connecticut woman chastised for dancing on her car at a Palm Beach hotel late Friday morning ended up driving away and crashing her vehicle through two security barricades outside Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s private club and home, drawing gunfire from law enforcement officers, before leading a police helicopter on a chase that ended in her arrest.
Hannah Roemhild, 30, a trained opera singer, is now in the custody of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
“This is not a terrorist thing,” Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said at a Friday afternoon news conference. “This is somebody that obviously was impaired somehow.”
Roemhild could face charges for assault on both federal and county law enforcement officers, Bradshaw said. No one was injured, although the situation might have easily ended differently, officials indicated.
By Dmitry Lisichenko
NPR: Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch Has Retired From Foreign Service.
Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine until last spring when she was ousted following a disinformation campaign by the president’s private lawyer, is retiring — not resigning.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Some news tonight – NPR has learned that one of the key figures in the impeachment drama, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, is retiring from the foreign service. She was the ambassador to Ukraine until last spring, when she was ousted following a disinformation campaign by the president’s private lawyer. Yovanovitch testified before Congress about the moment that she got a call from Washington telling her, come home.
Read more or listen at the link.
Of course Trump’s crimes will continue to be revealed by the media. It’s already happening:
NYT: Trump Told Bolton to Help His Ukraine Pressure Campaign, Book Says.
WaPo: New emails show how President Trump roiled NOAA during Hurricane Dorian.
I’m off to find comfort in tea and books. Have a nice weekend Sky Dancers and I hope you seek comfort in any way that works for you.
Final Days of Democracy Reads: It’s all over as the Fat Man Tweets
Posted: January 31, 2020 Filed under: morning reads 45 Comments
“Liberty Head ver. XII #218,” Peter Max
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Susan B Glasser puts it this way “THE SENATE CAN STOP PRETENDING NOW”. As I’ve lurched through my life, I always thought the most dangerous theory of constitutional law was the idea of a “unitary executive” on steroids and testosterone. It seemed destined to run in to some one thrown into the presidency on false pretense and not up to the vast responsibility and morality that entails. But, impeachment was supposed to checkmate that … right?
Well, the kid that took civics in high school, constitutional law at university, and lived through Watergate, several specious wars up to and including the Iraq invasion is now facing the bottomless pit of possibility that we’ve just lost our system of checks and balances. I politic therefore I blog. Today, I blog from depression and desperation.
What happens when Trump just gets away with everything unconstitutional that he’s done? What happens when he gets his notion that he’s above the law constantly fed by the Republicans in Congress? Well, if we thought we saw lawlessness in the past, we’re about to go on the big kids roller coaster of anything goes!
Around 10 p.m., Alexander and Murkowski joined with another fervent Trump critic turned defender in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, to pose a question to Trump’s defense team. “Isn’t it true,” they asked, that, even if Bolton testified and everything he said was accurate, it “still would not rise to the level of an impeachable offense, and that therefore his testimony would add nothing to the case?” Sensing where this was going, Trump’s lawyer Patrick Philbin hastened to agree.
“It’s over,” one Democratic senator said to another, according to a reporter in the gallery. And, indeed, it was. The question offered a preview of the Alexander statement to follow. A few minutes later, Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, gave a truncated closing statement that suggested that he, too, knew what was about to happen. “They are afraid of the witnesses,” Nadler said. “They know Mr. Bolton and others will only strengthen the case.” On that note, the trial adjourned at 10:41 p.m. Nineteen minutes later, Alexander’s office tweeted out his statement. Murkowski did not join in, at least not yet. “I am going to reflect on what I’ve heard, reread my notes, and decide whether I need to hear more,” she told reporters; her office said she would announce her decision on Friday morning. Her colleague Susan Collins, meanwhile, announced that she would vote yes for the witnesses. Mitt Romney followed suit first thing Friday morning, as well. But how much did it matter?
All fifteen previous impeachment trials in the U.S. Senate, including the two previous Presidential-impeachment trials, had witnesses. But Lamar Alexander has spoken. Donald Trump’s stonewalling will succeed where Nixon’s failed. Perhaps Alexander has done us all a favor: the trial that wasn’t really a trial will be over, and we will no longer have to listen to it. The Senate can stop pretending.
“Statue of Liberty Ver. III #358”, Peter Max
What’s left to give us any hope that this horrid man will be thrown to history to pillage? What can we do to ensure that he won’t fix our next elections or just refuse to leave the White House if soundly trounced? Is there any hope in these final hours of Senate Failure? Jordain Carney at The HIll writes “Three ways the end of the impeachment trial could play out”
The Senate is expected to convene by 1 p.m. on Friday. Senators are warning that if Republicans successfully block witnesses, senators are likely to move quickly to Trump’s acquittal on Friday night or early Saturday.
Before a vote on witnesses, both Trump’s legal team and House managers get up to two hours each to make their cases to the Senate, according to a resolution passed last week on the rules for the trial.
What happens after that? There are a few scenarios to watch for.
Scenario One: The Senate rejects calling witnesses and moves to acquit Trump
This appears to be the most likely outcome, as the pool of potential Republican votes is quickly shrinking.
n a stark turnaround from just days ago when Republicans were caught flat footed by allegations from former national security adviser John Bolton, GOP senators are voicing renewed confidence that they will be able to defeat the request for witnesses.Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) stopped short of declaring victory but told reporters, “I’ve never been more optimistic that we’re in a good spot.”
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) added that he expects a vote on “final judgement” to happen by Friday night
The Statue of Liberty,Steve Penley’s portrait of Lady Liberty.
This has been a difficult time to live in and to understand especially for those of us that have been steeped in American History and the development of our Constitutional Republic.
This is from Jonathan Chait at NY Mag: “The Republican Cover-up Will Backfire. The House Can Keep Investigating Trump.”
Toward the end, the impeachment trial’s strategic purpose narrowed into an obsessive quest to produce evidence. Democrats have defined victory not as removal, but as winning a procedural vote to allow more testimony, especially by John Bolton. The House managers have designed their arguments not to reinforce Trump’s guilt but to underscore the need for more testimony. They seem to have given little attention to the question of whether such a victory would actually serve their larger strategic purposes at all. Republicans may have succeeded in blocking all new evidence and driving toward the rapid conclusion they seek, bu the tactical victory may well become a strategic defeat.
If the several days that have passed since the Bolton revelation have proved anything, it is just how uninterested Republicans are in holding Trump to account for his misconduct. Initially, even Trump’s staunchest supporters conceded that pressuring Ukraine to investigate Trump’s rivals would be, if true, unacceptable. (Lindsey Graham: “very disturbing”; Steve Doocy: “off-the-rails-wrong.”) As evidence of guilt accumulated, their denial that this unacceptable conduct took place narrowed to a tiny, highly specific claim: No witness testified that Trump personally ordered them to carry out a quid pro quo. Bolton is the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
It is probably for this reason that Republicans have fallen back to a quasi-legal argument offered by Alan Dershowitz: Even if true, abuse of power is not an impeachable offense. While Dershowitz’s reasoning is ahistorical, legally absurd, and opens the door to aspiring strongmen, it signals the party’s determination to acquit Trump regardless of the facts. Democrats hoped to persuade four Republicans to allow new evidence, and thus to extend the trial for perhaps a few weeks, prove Trump’s culpability even more thoroughly than they have. But this would only proceed to a partisan vote to acquit.
This is about all I’m capable of today. We have a Republic and we may not be able to keep it. It’s truly depressing
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Tuesday Reads: Last Words on Kobe Bryant
Posted: January 28, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Alyssa Altobelli, Ara Zobayan, Bernie Sanders, Christina Mauser, Donald Trump, Felicia Sonmez, Gianna Bryant, impeachment, Joe Biden, John Altobelli, John Bolton, Kobe Bryant, Marty Baron, Payton Chester, Pete Buttigieg, rape, Sarah Chester, Washington Post 36 Comments
Good Morning!!
Two days after the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna, there has been almost no attention paid to the other 7 people who died in the tragic accident. Read about them at Buzzfeed News: Teenage Girls And Beloved Coaches Were Among The 9 Victims Of The Helicopter Crash That Killed Kobe Bryant.
John Altobelli, a 56-year-old head baseball coach at Orange Coast College, along with his wife, Keri, and youngest daughter, Alyssa, 13, were among those who died.
Alyssa and Gianna were teammates at Bryant’s Mamba Sports Academy. The team was set to play against a Fresno youth team on Sunday afternoon, the Fresno Bee reported.
John Altobelli had been a coach and mentor at Orange Coast College (OCC) for 27 years, helping many student-athletes earn scholarships so they could play at the four-year level, the college said in a statement.
“Coach Alto,” the college said, helped lead the Pirates to more than 700 wins and four state championships. He was named the National Coach of the Year by the American Baseball Coaches Association in 2019.
Altobelli family
The Altobelli’s are survived by two other children, a son JJ and daughter Lexi, now orphans.
Christina Mauser, 38, was the assistant coach for the Mamba Academy basketball team.
“My kids and I are devastated,” her husband, Matt Mauser, wrote in a Facebook post. “We lost our beautiful wife and mom today in a helicopter crash.”
The couple has three children, ages 11, 9, and 3….
Sarah Chester and her 13-year-old daughter, Payton, also died in the crash. Payton was a basketball player, NBC News reported.…
Todd Schmidt, the former principal at Harbor View Elementary School, wrote a heartfelt tribute to Payton, his former student, and her mother, calling them “two gorgeous human beings.”
“While the world mourns the loss of a dynamic athlete and humanitarian, I mourn the loss of two people just as important…their impact was just as meaningful, their loss will be just as keenly felt, and our hearts are just as broken,” Schmidt wrote in a Facebook post.
Christina Mauser
Chester leaves behind a husband Chris and two 16-year-old sons Hayden and Riley.
Ara Zobayan, the pilot of the helicopter, was a beloved figure in the aviation community. He was “instrument-rated” which meant he was able to fly in fog and clouds, KTLA reporter Christina Pascucci said.
Zobayan was Bryant’s private pilot, according to one of his flight students, Darren Kemp.
So many people–including young children–are devastated by these deaths, but all the attention has gone to the former basketball player. I still can’t get past my anger at the lionizing of Bryant, who was credibly accused of rape and never publicly dealt with the damage he did to the life of a 19-year-old woman. Ever since I saw the way the basketball stars were treated as if they could do no wrong in my high school, I’ve resented the way athletes are allowed to get away with almost anything, especially violence against women.
Sarah and Payton Chester
Somewhere the woman that Bryant raped is watching the coverage of his death and most likely reliving the trauma she experienced as she sees so much praise heaped upon her abuser.
On Sunday, Jill Filipovic wrote that Bryant has a “complicated legacy.” No, it’s not really complicated. He was a huge basketball star with a giant ego and he got away with rape. He’s certainly not alone in that. Gavin Polone at the Hollywood Reporter:
I guess our society thinks that certain transgressions by celebrities can be forgiven. What’s perplexing is the contrast between which wrongs are and aren’t forgivable. Based on what I’ve read, I believe Kobe most probably raped a woman and still was paid $26 million in 2015 by Nike, Hublot, Panini Authentic, Turkish Airlines and others to endorse their products; Ben Roethlisberger was accused of raping two women and still made more than $35 million for one year as an NFL quarterback; Greg Hardy certainly beat the shit out of his ex-girlfriend and was signed to play defensive end for the Dallas Cowboys; Jameis Winston was sued for the rape of a student at FSU and didn’t even break stride to the NFL (having watched the victim’s recounting of events, I believe her). Both R. Kelly and Michael Jackson were accused of sexual misconduct, yet the former still is performing and the latter practically has been deified.
But what isn’t forgiven? Killing someone? Nope, Ray Lewis was accused of that, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and now is an NFL analyst for ESPN. Donte Stallworth killed a pedestrian while driving drunk and played the next year. So violence, especially against women, can be excused.
Ara Zobayan
Here’s a piece at Vice by Albert Berneko that counters Filipovic’s “complicated legacy” notion: Kobe Bryant Was No More Complicated Than Anyone Else.
Maybe the actual very last thing the world needs or ever will need, ever again, is for one more man’s power or fame or brilliance or death to be used as a reason to throw the word “complicated” over his abuses like an obscuring blanket. It’s a dishonest sidestep, anyway. Everyone is complicated. You can be a tortured mass of endless complications and still never sexually assault anyone.
What the fact of having committed, or having credibly been accused of committing, sexual assault complicates for an acclaimed celebrity is the feelings—or maybe, at most, the immediate social situation—of those who’d like to go right on celebrating him. Ironically, or maybe not ironically, nothing smooths this complication more easily than the word “complicated”: Be sure to include it in your hosannas. It is a way to skip past the discomfort and ambiguity of actually grappling with the acclaimed celebrity’s monstrousness straight to the part where you congratulate yourself for having done so. I have integrated the fullness of this imperfect person; when I now return to praising him, be sure that it is with the appropriate level of personal internal conflicted feeling.
It seems reasonable to guess that former Los Angeles Laker star Kobe Bryant was a complicated person, because he was a person and not the Archangel Gabriel. More relevant to a summation of his life, he was also a great and spectacular basketball player, one of the biggest stars in the history of the sport, and a powerful man who, in 2003 and at the height of his celebrity, was credibly accused of raping a 19-year-old hotel employee and then avoided a trial by leaking his accuser’s identity and shaming her into silence. I don’t think these things complicate each other, unless you happen to believe there’s a personal moral component to being good at making contested jump-shots.
Marty Baron
To top off the protect-Kobe hysteria, Marty Baron, editor of the Washington Post–who was editor of the Boston Globe when the Spotlight team exposed sexual abuse in the Catholic Church–publicly shamed one of his reporters, Felicia Sonmez who is a survivor of sexual assault.
Vanity Fair: “There’s Incredible Outrage”: Washington Post Newsroom Revolts after Reporter Suspended for Kobe Bryant Tweets.
As the collective grief crested on Twitter following TMZ’s shocking scoop that Kobe Bryant had been killed in a helicopter crash, Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez had a different idea. She shared a 2016 Daily Beast story detailing a rape allegation made against the NBA legend more than a decade earlier. “Any public figure is worth remembering in their totality,” she tweeted Sunday, “even if that public figure is beloved and that totality unsettling.”
Vitriol and threats streamed into Sonmez’s inbox, which she relayed on Twitter, along with screenshots of the attacks. The Bryant-related tweets have since been deleted. By Sunday afternoon, Somnez had been suspended—placed on “administrative leave”—a move that’s prompted anger and confusion inside the Post newsroom. “There’s incredible outrage. The outrage is like nothing I’ve ever seen here,” one Post source told us. “People just feel like it was way over the top.”
The Daily Beast article was an exhaustive chronicle of the allegations against Bryant and his response to them. While far from flattering to Bryant, it described an inescapable part of his history, and, fraught as social media can be in the current world of journalism, it was difficult for many to see how posting it was out of bounds. Post staffers were looking for clarity Monday after managing editor Tracy Grant said in a statement that Sonmez violated the newsroom’s social media policy and “displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.”
Felicia Sonmez
I hope you’ll go read the rest. Sonmez spent the night in a hotel after her address was posted on-line by outraged Kobe fans. I’d also suggest reading this piece in the Post by Eric Wemple: The Post’s misguided suspension of Felicia Sonmez over Kobe Bryant tweets.
I’ll be quiet about this now, but I just had to get it off my chest. I can acknowledge that millions of people are sad about the death of their idol. I just think there should be some recognition that the way we treat (male) athletes in our culture means that the people who dare to say no to their desires are publicly shamed and punished.
Some other news stories to check out today:
On the Bolton revelations:
NYT: Bolton Was Concerned That Trump Did Favors for Autocratic Leaders, Book Says.
WaPo: Bolton book roils Washington as onetime allies turn on Trump’s former national security adviser.
Barbara McQuade at WaPo: Trump waived executive privilege when he called Bolton a liar.
Daily Beast: Top Ukraine Official: I Trusted Bolton More Than Anyone.
Other impeachment news and comment:
Axios: Republicans brace for domino effect on witnesses.
Impeachment expert Frank Bowman at The Atlantic: Trump’s Defense Against Subpoenas Makes No Legal Sense.
WaPo: Trump’s impeachment defense: Who is paying the president’s lawyers?
Jamelle Bouie at NYT: Mitch McConnell’s Complicity Has Deep Roots.
Vetting Bernie Sanders (finally)
NYT: Bernie Sanders and His Internet Army.
David Frum at the Atlantic: Bernie Can’t Win.
Richard North Patterson at the Bulwark: This Is How Trump Would Destroy Bernie Sanders.
Jonathan Chait at NY Mag: Running Bernie Sanders Against Trump Would Be an Act of Insanity.
Other campaign news:
NYT: How Some People of Color Feel Inside the Buttigieg Campaign.
Politico: Why Biden scaled back in New Hampshire.
What stories are you following today?
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Carissa
bostonboomer
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mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
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Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
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