Thursday: Day After Christmas Open Thread
Posted: December 26, 2019 Filed under: just because, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Alfred Hitchcock, baby black rhino, Bernie Sanders, cognitive decline, dementia, Donald Trump, Doppsee, Ingrid Bergman, Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, Nicole Marie Poole Franklin, Potter Park Zoo, Seth Davin Norrholm, Spellbound, US Cybercom 27 Comments
Santa resting on the day after Christmas
Good Morning!!
We’re halfway through the holiday madness, and I have to admit it has been nice having slow news days instead of shocks to the system every few hours day after day. There really is nothing to write about today, but here are a few reads to check out if you’re interested.
Of course Trump is still nuts and he’s still tweeting nonsense.
And he’s still in steep cognitive decline. Raw Story: Psychiatry expert says Trump’s rambling Merry Christmas rant includes three signs of serious mental impairment.
President Donald Trump’s speech in Florida over the weekend provides evidence that he is suffering from cognitive decline, according to a psychiatric expert.
Seth Davin Norrholm, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine, said Monday that the president’s recent rant about Christmas included at least three signs of mental problems.
“So if anybody wants to be a nice conservative, talk show host is not a bad living, I would say. But I have to say, he’s a very unique guy and he’s a great man and he’s been a great friend. So thank you to Rush. Thank you,” Trump said.
“And let me begin by wishing you a beautif — [NOTE from BB: This is the point where he had the shoulder spasm and lost the plot at 22 sec.] look, do you remember this? Do you remember this? Remember, they were trying to take Christmas out of Christmas. Do you remember? They didn’t want to let you say Merry Christmas,” Trump continued.
“You’d go around, you’d see department stores that have everything red, snow, beautiful, ribbons, bows. Everything was there. But they wouldn’t say Merry Christmas. They’re all saying Merry Christmas again. You remember?”
The Washington Post: U.S. Cybercom contemplates information warfare to counter Russian interference in 2020 election.
The New York Times: Black Rhino Born at Michigan Zoo on Christmas Eve.
Doppsee, a 12-year-old black rhino, presented a Michigan zoo and conservationists with an early holiday gift on Christmas Eve, delivering a newborn calf in a rare zoo birth for the endangered species.
The arrival of the male calf, which hasn’t been named yet, was the first time that a black rhino had been born at the Potter Park Zoo in Lansing, Mich., in its 100-year history, according to a news release.
Pat Fountain, an animal care supervisor at the zoo, said on Wednesday that the birth was one of the zoo’s “crowning achievements” because black rhinos are “statistically and historically very hard to breed and be successful.” Getting Doppsee to breed with Phineus, the calf’s father, who came to the zoo in 2017, was a “milestone,” he said.
About two black rhinos are born every year in facilities accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums in the United States, Mr. Fountain said, noting how rare the birth was.
Here’s some material for nightmares from Politico: Democratic insiders: Bernie could win the nomination.
For months the Vermont senator was written off by Democratic Party insiders as a candidate with a committed but ultimately narrow base who was too far left to win the primary. Elizabeth Warren had skyrocketed in the polls and seemed to be leaving him behind in the race to be progressive voters’ standard-bearer in 2020.
But in the past few weeks, something has changed. In private conversations and on social media, Democratic officials, political operatives and pundits are reconsidering Sanders’ chances.
“It may have been inevitable that eventually you would have two candidates representing each side of the ideological divide in the party. A lot of smart people I’ve talked to lately think there’s a very good chance those two end up being Biden and Sanders,” said David Brock, a longtime Hillary Clinton ally who founded a pro-Clinton super PAC in the 2016 campaign. “They’ve both proven to be very resilient.”
Democratic insiders said that they are rethinking Sanders’ bid for a few reasons: First, Warren has recently fallen in national and early-state surveys. Another factor, they said, is that he has withstood the ups and downs of the primary, including his own heart attack. At the same time, other candidates with once-high expectations, such as Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Beto O’Rourke, have dropped out or languished in single digits in the polls.
The Washington Post: Woman who drove into a girl for being ‘a Mexican’ hit a black child the same day, police say.
A woman accused of driving into a teenager because she believed the girl was Mexican had struck another child with her car less than an hour earlier, authorities say.
Police in Iowa say Nicole Marie Poole Franklin struck a 12-year-old black boy as he walked home from school earlier this month. The 42-year-old Des Moines woman has not discussed her motive in that incident, but authorities say they are sickened by the seeming hate behind actions that occurred over less than two hours that day, ending with Franklin allegedly calling African Americans racial slurs in a gas station.
“When you look at the pattern of behavior here, you look at the victim selection, I think it speaks for itself,” said Sgt. Paul Parizek of the Des Moines Police Department.
Franklin’s case drew anger and fear last week when officials announced that the woman had not only confessed to a Dec. 9 hit and run but also told police that she targeted a 14-year-old for her perceived country of origin. Community members pushed for a hate crime designation on top of an attempted murder charge.
Lucy Ellman at The New York Times: Patriarchy Is Just a Spell.
I was in line at a cheese shop, contemplating our dependence throughout life on milk, mothers’ milk (even if we move quickly on to the milk of other species’ mothers, like cow, goat, sheep, buffalo or vegan substitutes, which emerge from mother earth), when it occurred to me that the Alfred Hitchcock movie “Spellbound” is really about sexual harassment. It’s not about Gregory Peck’s goofy psychological problems; it’s an elucidation of women’s problems — with men. Hitch was way ahead of his time: It’s a #MeToo movie released 74 years ago.
Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck in “Spellbound.”Credit…Getty Images
Hitchcock was always keen on female protagonists, usually blond. He used (and some would say abused) Grace Kelly, Carole Lombard, Eva Marie Saint, Tippi Hedren, Joan Fontaine, Doris Day, Janet Leigh, Kim Novak and Ingrid Bergman. Oddly, he settled on Hedren for “The Birds” and “Marnie,” an awkward actress at best, brittle and shaky. Hitchcock’s treatment of these actresses was pretty sadistic, yet his dramatic portrayals of women are often sympathetic….
One principle of psychoanalysis is that what is buried deep will surface; it will pop out in some way, no matter how well you try to repress it. The craziness buried in “Spellbound” is misogyny: The movie veers off to become an examination not of the hazards of neurotic trauma but of what it’s like to be a woman tormented by patriarchy. For wherever Bergman goes, she’s under scrutiny from men, if not direct attack.
The story seems at first to be about Gregory Peck’s mixed-up identity and amnesia and phobias and fainting spells and stuff, but in the end you realize Peck is by the by. The movie is told from Bergman’s point of view, and it’s really about the difficulties she faces (Hitchcock was probably one of them, given his penchant for tormenting his leading ladies). You can tell Peck doesn’t matter much, by the way the three central traumas of his life are so breezily dealt with once they surface. These complexes of his are MacGuffins. What matters is Bergman. Of course.
Read the whole thing at the NYT link.
The Washington Post: Girls adored ‘Little Women.’ Louisa May Alcott did not.
Above all else, Louisa May Alcott was a radical. From an early age, she was an abolitionist. She was also a feminist, committed to never marrying, and loved to pull up her skirts and go for a long run through the woods.
Louisa May Alcott
Alcott’s most famous work, “Little Women,” was nearly the opposite — a light, juvenile novel focused on sisterly love and domestic peace. And though it was semi-autobiographical, she hated it. Now, the latest film version, directed by Greta Gerwig, hits theaters Christmas Day.
Alcott’s father, Bronson Alcott, with whom she was close, was also a radical. He hung out with Transcendentalist poets and used the family home as a stop on the Underground Railroad. He was also a teacher who was disgraced after publishing a book with ideas about education that were a little too innovative.
And he was prone to depression. Once he was fired from his school, he didn’t work again for years. An attempt to start a utopian community failed utterly, deepening his depression, and his wife and daughters were forced to take any work they could to keep the family afloat.
Alcott took on sewing projects, worked as a maid to a rich woman on a trip to Europe, and tried to sell stories she had written to women’s magazines. She also worked as a Civil War nurse, and her written account of this period turned into her first literary success.
But her favorite things to write were suspense novels, which she published under the name A.M. Bernard. These stories featured liberated women following sensational passions across the high seas and in glamorous locales. She wrote dozens of these stories for women’s magazines but earned only a pittance.
Then her editor finally convinced her to grind out some sentimental schock. BTW, I hated Little Women, and I’m glad to know that Alcott did too.
Have a great day everyone!
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?
Thursday Reads: Trump Impeached
Posted: December 19, 2019 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Donald Trump, impeachment 6 Comments
Good Morning!!
I have a sense this morning of living in an insane, out-of-control world. I’m sure I’m not alone. Last night, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives. While he was being impeached, Trump ranted for more than two hours at one of his Hitler-style rallies. Even the audience couldn’t handle it–people were streaming out of the rally as he incoherently shouted out inane, childish insults.
The New York Times Editorial Board: Trump Has Been Impeached. Republicans Are Following Him Down.
On Wednesday evening, the House of Representatives impeached the president of the United States. A magnificent and terrible machine engineered by the founders, still and silent through almost all of American history, has for only the third time in 231 years shifted into motion, to consider whether Congress must call a president to account for abuse of power.
So why does it all seem so banal? The outcome so foreordained?
Most people say they know what’s going to happen, and who are we to say they’re wrong? The House voted to impeach Donald Trump by a party-line vote, with the exception of three Democrats representing Trump-friendly districts who voted against at least one article of impeachment. In the next month or two, the Senate will almost surely acquit him, also on a party-line vote.
It isn’t supposed to be this way. There’s plenty of blame to go around for the intense — really, infantilizing — degree of polarization that has overwhelmed American politics across the past 40 years. But the nihilism of this moment — the trashing of constitutional safeguards, the scorn for facts, the embrace of corruption, the indifference to historical precedent and to foreign interference in American politics — is due principally to cowardice and opportunism on the part of Republican leaders who have chosen to reject their party’s past standards and positions and instead follow Donald Trump, all the way down.
It’s a lot to ask of Republicans to insist on holding their own leader accountable, just as that was a lot to expect of Democrats during the Clinton impeachment inquiry. But while many Democrats then criticized President Bill Clinton and some voted to impeach him, Republican lawmakers would not breathe a word against Mr. Trump on Wednesday.
It looks like Nancy Pelosi has more tricks up her sleeve: The Washington Post: Pelosi says House may withhold impeachment articles, delaying Senate trial.
Moments after a historic vote to impeach President Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House could at least temporarily withhold the articles from the Senate — a decision, she suggested, that could depend on how the other chamber chooses to conduct its trial on Trump’s removal.
“We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side,” she said, referring to the House “managers” who present the case for removal to the Senate. “So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us. So hopefully it will be fair. And when we see what that is, we’ll send our managers.”
The comments came as a group of House Democrats pushed Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other leaders to withhold the articles — a notion that has gained traction among some on the political left as a way of potentially forcing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to conduct a trial on more favorable terms for Democrats. And if no agreement is reached, some have argued, the trial could be delayed indefinitely, denying Trump an expected acquittal.
Pelosi would not answer questions about whether she was entertaining an indefinite hold on the articles — one that could prevent a trial from taking place before the next presidential election.
“We’re not having that discussion,” she said, adding that it “would have been our intention” to send the articles forthwith, “but we’ll see what happens over there.”
Vox: Trump’s response to impeachment: attacking the late husband of a pro-impeachment Democrat.
President Donald Trump’s response to the House of Representatives’ approval of two articles of impeachment against him was, in some respects, even uglier than could’ve reasonably been anticipated. And given Trump’s track record, that’s saying something.
At the exact moment the House approved the first article of impeachment, Trump was 600 miles away at a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, telling a relatively innocuous, absurd tale he’s repeatedly told about how the military’s stealth planes are literally invisible.
John Dingell
Things took a darker turn from there, however. Instead of backing away from the conspiracy theories about the Bidens that are at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, Trump leaned into them, at one point claiming that if he did what the Bidens have done, “they’d bring the electric chair back.” Though that said more about his sense of victimization by House Democrats, its underlying assumption is that former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter did something criminal. But the bad optics of Hunter Biden serving in a lucrative position on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the same time as his father was involved in Ukraine policy aside, there’s not a shred of evidence supporting Trump’s claims.
At other points during the rally, Trump basked in “lock her up!” chants directed at Hillary Clinton, and suggested she might end up behind bars. (The crowd also directed “lock her up” chants at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier in the night, when Vice President Mike Pence was on stage.) He heaped scorn on the Democrat who oversaw the House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearings, chair Adam Schiff, calling him “not the best looking guy I’ve ever seen,” and on former FBI Director James Comey, saying “Did I do a great job when I fired his ass?”
Olivia Nuzzi at New York Magazine: Rep. Debbie Dingell Responds to Trump Suggesting Her Late Husband Is in Hell.
As Donald Trump told a crowd in Battle Creek that the deceased Michigan Representative John Dingell might be in hell, his widow Debbie Dingell, who occupies his former seat, was back in Washington on the House floor as Democrats voted to impeach him.
“Debbie Dingell, that’s a real beauty,” Trump said, “So, she calls me up, like, eight months ago — her husband was here a long time.” It was actually Trump who called Dingell after her husband’s death in February.
Debbie Dingell
In a series of unfinished sentences and odd impersonations, Trump went on to claim that Debbie had asked for special treatment to honor John, requesting that flags be lowered and that he lie in state in the Capitol rotunda, which never happened.
“But I didn’t give him the B treatment,” Trump said. “I didn’t give him the C or the D — I could’ve. I gave the A-plus treatment.” As if to impersonate Debbie, he said, “Take down the flags.” Then, in a voice that suggested someone else asked him the question, he said, “Why you taking them down?” He answered the question in his own voice, “For ex-Congressman Dingell.” Then he assumed the other character, “Oh, okay.” Then he was Debbie again, “Do this, do that, do that. Rotunda.”
“Everything,” he said, “I gave him everything. That’s okay. I don’t want anything for it. I don’t need anything for anything. She calls me up, ‘It’s the nicest thing that’s ever happened, thank you so much, John would be so thrilled, he’s looking down, he’d be so thrilled. Thank you so much, sir.’ I said that’s okay, don’t worry about it. Maybe he’s looking up, I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe.”
Trump is a deranged monster and he’s in the most powerful job in the world.
Here’s a piece by Jonathan Chait that could only have appeared in the Onion three years ago: Vladimir Putin, Director of Influential Pro-Trump Super-PAC, Endorses Reelection.
President Trump has worked hard to hold key elements of his electoral coalition, and today his campaign received a major though expected boost when Russian president Vladimir Putin announced his support. “I don’t think Trump will be voted out of power on made-up charges,” the Russian strongman told reporters in Moscow Thursday. “Democrats lost the last election, and now they want to win by other means.”
Putin effectively runs a pro-Trump super-PAC. In 2016, his government developed a strong preference for Trump’s election, which it supported through targeted social media, a spattering of rallies and, most effectively, an email-hacking operation against his opposition. A close ally of Putin’s has reportedly financed efforts by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, Trump’s leading opponent at the moment.
Putin obviously stands to lose a great deal if Trump fails to win a second term. While Trump was only able to delay but not stop a package of military aid to Ukraine that passed by veto-proof margins, he has taken a number of pro-Russian positions out of character with other U.S. politicians. Betsy Swan reports that Trump is currently opposing a bill sanctioning Russia for its attacks on Ukraine and interference in the U.S. election. He has also withheld diplomatic support for Ukraine, which would give that country leverage in its peace negotiations with Russia, and pleaded the case for readmitting Russia at G7 summits. Trump has previously repeated strange Russian talking points, such as that NATO is a bad idea because Montenegro is aggressive and might attack Russia, and that the USSR had to invade Afghanistan to repel terrorist attacks.
Read the rest at New York Magazine.
This is interesting. Mark Meadows, one of Trump’s most loyal supporters is not running for reelection. The Washington Post:
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), one of President Trump’s closest allies and staunchest defenders in Congress, announced Thursday that he would not seek reelection next year but would instead stay “in the fight” with Trump in an unspecified role.
“For everything there is a season,” Meadows said in a statement. “After prayerful consideration and discussion with family, today I’m announcing that my time serving Western North Carolina in Congress will come to a close at the end of this term.”
Meadows, a former chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who has served in Congress since 2013, is the 25th House Republican to announce he will not seek reelection next year, according to a tally by the House Press Gallery.
Meadows, 60, was considered for the position of Trump’s chief of staff last year, but Trump ultimately told him that he would like him to remain on Capitol Hill.
Maybe Trump is planning to dump Mulvaney for Meadows?
Tonight seven white candidates will appear in a <a href=”https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/us/politics/when-december-democratic-debate.html” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Democratic presidential debate</a>. Not one of of those candidates is someone I can vote for in the primary. I don’t know if I’ll even watch the infernal thing. It feels like a nightmare to me.
But hope springs eternal. Kamala Harris, who has left the race will now be able to focus her attention on the Senate trial. She fired opening shots in an op-ed at The New York Times this morning: Kamala Harris: Will McConnell Let the Senate Hold a Fair Impeachment Trial?
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Trump. That means that sometime early in the new year, I will take an oath on the Senate floor to uphold the Constitution, review evidence and follow the facts wherever they lead, regardless of party or ideology. Every one of my colleagues will be required to do the same.
As a former prosecutor, I understand the importance of holding powerful people accountable. I know that every trial requires fairness and truth. Having worked my whole life serving the people, I know that any trial that abandons the pursuit of truth cannot be considered fair or just.
But the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, appears more interested in covering up the president’s misconduct than in pursuing truth and fairness. He is already trying to limit the impeachment trial by preventing witnesses from testifying, and he has all but announced a verdict. In doing so, he showed the American people that he has no intention of honoring his oath.
Let’s be clear: Mr. McConnell doesn’t want a Senate trial. He wants a Senate cover-up.
Fortunately, Mr. McConnell does not have the power to unilaterally undermine this trial. Every single senator will be empowered with an equal vote on how the trial will proceed. Though in just the past year, Mr. McConnell has used his position to unilaterally block legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act, lower the prices of prescription drugs and address the gun violence epidemic, he cannot wield the same authority in a Senate impeachment trial.
Read the rest at the NYT.
That’s all I have for you today. What stories are you following?
Thursday Reads: Obedience to Authority and Impeachment
Posted: December 12, 2019 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: authoritarianism, Donald Trump, impeachment, Milgrim experiment, Mitch McConnell, obedience, Stanley Milgrim 27 Comments
Good Morning!!
I haven’t been able to watch much of the impeachment debate last night and today. I just can’t stand to listen to the Republicans shouting nonsense over and over again. Why have these people willingly submitted to an ignorant, dementia-riddled, narcissistic authoritarian “president?” Are we really going to allow our country to become a dictatorship because these cowards refuse to stand up to a pathetic man like Trump? Are there really no Republicans with the courage to defend the Constitution? What is wrong with these people?
Yesterday, I came across an article in Scientific American Mind that is highly relevant to these questions. I’m sure you remember the famous experiment by social psychologist Stanley Milgrim that demonstrated that most people will obey an authority figure even if it requires them to physically hurt other human beings. Here’s a brief video explaining the experiment:
Rethinking the Infamous Milgram Experiment in Authoritarian Times, by Jacob M. Appel
In brief, Milgram, at the time a 26-year-old assistant professor at Yale University, recruited subjects to participate “in a study of memory and learning,” which entailed administering an associative learning task to another subject (actually an accomplice in the study) and then administering painful shocks of substantially higher voltage for each incorrect answer. The purported goal was to study human obedience in the wake of the atrocities of Nazi Germany when, as Milgram described it, “millions of innocent persons were systematically slaughtered on command.” The results proved “surprising” in “the sheer strength of obedient tendencies”; in this first reported experiment, 26 of 40 American subjects shocked the victims at the highest level. Twenty variations with more than 600 additional subjects yielded similar outcomes…..
But what should the takeaway be from Milgram’s research? For more than a half century, investigators—most prominently Thomas Blass—have sought to explain why Milgram’s subjects proved so obedient. Although correlates have been found with personality, internal versus external locus of control, underlying belief systems and situational factors, no answer has proven entirely satisfactory.
Instead, the public is generally left with Milgram’s own impression as explained in his book Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974): “Tyrannies are perpetuated by diffident men who do not possess the courage to act out their beliefs.” Or, even more broadly, in the subtitle of his Harper’s article from the previous year: “A social psychologist’s experiments show that most people will hurt their fellows rather than disobey an authority.”
But some participants in Milgram’s study did refuse to obey.
Blass has noted that there must be “individual differences in obedience … because in most obedience studies, given the same stimulus situation, one finds both obedience and disobedience taking place.” In other words, some people do disobey. Some of Milgram’s subjects did defy the experimenter. Like Jan Rensaleer, a Dutch immigrant who responded to the experiment’s warning that he had no other choice to continue at 255 volts with the following memorable declaration:
“I do have a choice. Why don’t I have a choice? I came here on my own free will. I thought I could help in a research project. But if I have to hurt somebody to do that, or if I was in his place, too, I wouldn’t stay there. I can’t continue. I’m very sorry. I think I’ve gone too far already, probably.”
In some cases, the subject stood up during the experiment and walked away.
So maybe it is a mistake to view Milgram’s work as an “obedience experiment”—although he clearly did. Maybe what he actually conducted was a disobedience experiment, showing that some people will not follow orders no matter how strong the social pressure.
They are out there, waiting the moment when history calls upon them to disobey. We should not lose sight of them in the weeds of social psychology. They are Stanley Milgram’s unheralded legacy—and we may even stand among them.
Will any Republicans find the will to disobey Trump and McConnell? What will we do when the time comes for us fight back against the growing authoritarianism in our government and its institutions?
Here’s the latest on impeachment:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected to hold a final vote to acquit President Donald Trump, should he be impeached, when a majority of senators believe his trial has run its course instead of holding a vote on dismissing the articles of impeachment, two Republican senators told CNN on Wednesday.
Republicans want to have a vote on acquittal — to clear the President of the charges against him — not simply rely on a 51-vote threshold procedural motion to dismiss the hotly disputed case.
The Constitution mandates 67 votes are required to convict the President and remove him from office, a barrier widely considered too high to be reached in this case.
One vote McConnell can’t rely on is that of Vice President Mike Pence, who has “no role in impeachment,” according to a GOP leadership aide, despite being president of the Senate with the mandate to break ties….
McConnell hinted at this strategy when he spoke to reporters on Tuesday and said the Senate would have two choices after hearing opening arguments from the House impeachment managers and the President’s defense counsel.
“It could go down the path of calling witnesses and basically having another trial or it could decide — and again, 51 members could make that decision — that they’ve heard enough and believe they know what would happen and could move to vote on the two articles of impeachment,” he said. “Those are the options. No decisions have been made yet.”
The Washington Post: Senate Republicans look to hold short impeachment trial despite Trump’s desire for an aggressive defense.
Senate Republicans are coalescing around a strategy of holding a short impeachment trial early next year that would include no witnesses, a plan that could clash with President Trump’s desire to stage a public defense of his actions toward Ukraine that would include testimony the White House believes would damage its political rivals.
Several GOP senators on Wednesday said it would be better to limit the trial and quickly vote to acquit Trump, rather than engage in what could become a political circus.
“I would say I don’t think the appetite is real high for turning this into a prolonged spectacle,” Senate Majority Whip John Thune (S.D.), the chamber’s second-ranking Republican, told The Washington Post on Wednesday when asked whether Trump will get the witnesses he wants in an impeachment trial. “Members want to deal with the arguments, hear the case and hopefully reach a conclusion.”
The emerging Senate GOP plan would provide sufficient time, possibly two weeks, for both the House impeachment managers and Trump’s attorneys to make their arguments before a vote on the president’s fate, according to 13 senators and aides familiar with the discussions, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private talks.
Most notably, a quick, clean trial is broadly perceived to be the preference of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who wants to minimize political distractions in an election year during which Republicans will be working to protect their slim majority in the chamber.
The tension now is over whether to allow witnesses who could turn the trial into an even more contentious affair.
But a lot can happen in two weeks. How will the public react to a sham trial? How horrible will Trump’s behavior become? McConnell has a problem:
McConnell is not sure Republicans have enough votes to only call Trump’s preferred list, the person said. Any agreement to call a witness would require 51 votes, and if Democratic votes were needed to end an impasse among Republicans, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) would demand his own list of witnesses as part of any compromise.
Under McConnell’s thinking, this could possibly mean calling Vice President Pence and top White House aides, such as acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, to testify.
“Witnesses would be a double-edged sword,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said.
So McConnell will probably try to avoid calling witnesses? Will there be public outrage? I don’t know. I guess we are going to find out.
More reads, links only:
Kurt Bardella at NBC News: House Republicans’ Trump impeachment strategy was simple: Distract, deceive and yell.
EJ Dionne at The Washington Post: Our country is accepting the unacceptable.
Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg: Abuse of Power? Republicans Seem OK With It.
CNN: FBI agents warn of ‘chilling effect’ from Trump and Barr attacks.
The Washington Post: Eric Holder: William Barr is unfit to be attorney general.
Bloomberg: Giuliani Ally Parnas Got $1 Million From Russia, U.S. Says.
Emma Green at The Atlantic: American Jews Are Terrified.
The Daily Beast: Ukrainians: Trump Just Sent Us ‘a Terrible Signal’
Anne Applebaum at The Atlantic: The False Romance of Russia. American conservatives who find themselves identifying with Putin’s regime refuse to see the country for what it actually is.
John F. Harris at Politico: What if Trump weren’t nuts?
Tuesday Art and Reads
Posted: December 10, 2019 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Adam Schiff, art, articles of impeachment, Christopher Steele, Christopher Wray, Cover-Up General Barr, Do Fornier, Donald Trump, Eric Swalwell, FBI, Gerry Nadler, IG Michael Horowitz, IG report, Ivanka Trump, John Durham, Nancy Pelosi 39 Comments
Good Morning!!
The paintings in today’s post are by Do Fournier, a contemporary French painter. Here’s a little information about her:
Do Fournier (French, b.1951) is a Contemporary painter, originally from Guerande, Brittany, France. She began her career as a successful illustrator, and, in 1984, changed her focus to the creation of her own paintings. Her works were well received, and numerous prestigious exhibitions of her artworks have been mounted in France. In addition, she has frequently been invited to exhibit at the Salon d’Automne in Paris.
Fournier creates fantastic, colorful, and intimate works inspired by her home in France, which overlooks the sea. Her family and pets, as well as her collection of objects d’art, rugs, and textiles, are her primary subjects.
As the noted French critic Gerard Xuriguera has observed: “Her approach in an uneasy society is not to describe it’s pain but the potential it still has for joy, it’s fragile moments of charm and peacefulness stolen from a routine existence. To do this she expresses reality in its most intimate, sensual, peaceful and carnal form. Not as imitation but as a vision filtered through her observations and cast in the exuberance of her blazing colours. What she is trying to capture is fleeting emotion, to immobilize it and express it as simply as possible.
Breaking News
Right now I’m watching a press conference by House Leader Nancy Pelosi and the chairs of the five House committees involved in the impeachment investigation.
In yesterday’s impeachment hearing, Rep Eric Swalwell spelled out the case against Trump in no uncertain terms.
https://twitter.com/QasimRashid/status/1204164336681463808
Today’s Reads
The New York Times: Another Inquiry Doesn’t Back Up Trump’s Charges. So, on to the Next.
President Trump and his allies spent months promising that a report on the origins of the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation would be a kind of Rosetta Stone for Trump-era conspiracy enthusiasts — the key to unlocking the secrets of a government plot to keep Mr. Trump from being elected in 2016.
On that point, the report by the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, did not deliver, even as it found serious problems with how F.B.I. officials justified the surveillance of a Trump campaign aide to a federal court.
But by the time it was released, the president, his attorney general, his supporters in Congress and the conservative news media had already declared victory and decamped for the next battle in the wider war to convince Americans of the enemies at home and abroad arrayed against the Trump presidency.
They followed a script they have used for nearly three years: Engage in a choreographed campaign of presidential tweets, Fox News appearances and fiery congressional testimony to create expectations about finding proof of a “deep state” campaign against Mr. Trump. And then, when the proof does not emerge, skew the results and prepare for the next opportunity to execute the playbook.
That opportunity has arrived in the form of an investigation by aRea Connecticut prosecutor ordered this year by Attorney General William P. Barr — and the president and his allies are now predicting it will be the one to deliver damning evidence that the F.B.I., C.I.A. and even close American allies conspired against Mr. Trump in the 2016 election.
Read the rest at the NYT.
One startling revelation from the IG report was that Ivanka Trump has been friends with Christopher Steele for years.
ABC News: ‘Dossier’ author Chris Steele met Ivanka Trump years before Russia scandal, source says.
Nearly a decade before the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka met a British intelligence officer who ran the Russia desk — and when the agent left his covert service and moved into private practice in 2010, she stayed in touch, ABC News has learned.
Artist Do Fournier
The two exchanged emails but never worked together, and the man, Christopher Steele, would one day re-emerge in a most unexpected way, taking a central role in the Russia scandal that consumed the early years of her father’s presidency, according to a source familiar with their past contacts.
The prior relationship came to light as investigators with the Department of Justice Inspector General’s office was looking into allegations of political bias at the origins of the Russia investigation since May 2018….
In 2007, Ivanka Trump met Steele at a dinner and they began corresponding about the possibility of future work together, the source said. The following year, the two exchanged emails about meeting up near Trump Tower, according to several emails seen by ABC News. And the two did meet at Trump Tower according to the source. The inspector general’s report mentions a meeting with a “Trump family member” there. They suggest Ivanka Trump and Steele stayed in touch via emails over the next several years. In one 2008 exchange they discussed dining together in New York at a restaurant just blocks from Trump Tower.
Ivanka Trump worked as an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, managing a range of foreign real estate projects, including in parts of the world where Steele’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence touted expertise. She and Steele discussed services Orbis could offer to the Trump Organization regarding its planned expansion into foreign markets, according to two sources familiar with the meetings.
Read more at ABC News.
Also from ABC News: FBI Director Chris Wray reacts to DOJ watchdog report on Russia investigation: Exclusive.
FBI Director Christopher Wray offered mixed reactions to a Justice Department watchdog report that uncovered “serious performance failures” on the part of agents involved in the Russia investigation but ultimately determined the bureau was justified in launching its probe.
Artist Do Fournier
In an exclusive broadcast interview with ABC News, Wray lamented “actions described in this report that [he] considered unacceptable and unrepresentative of who we are as an institution.” But, he said it was “important that the inspector general found that, in this particular instance, the investigation was opened with appropriate predication and authorization.” [….]
But the president and his allies have called it “a major SPY scandal” and accused those involved of working on behalf of the “Deep State.”
Wray did not respond directly to the president, but pushed back on the “Deep State” characterization of the bureau’s work.
“I think that’s the kind of label that’s a disservice to the men and women who work at the FBI who I think tackle their jobs with professionalism, with rigor, with objectivity, with courage,” Wray said. “So that’s not a term I would ever use to describe our work force and I think it’s an affront to them.”
Naturally, Trump is enraged at Wray’s remarks. Will he fire another FBI Director?
The Washington Post: Trump lashes out at FBI director in wake of Justice Department inspector general’s report.
President Trump lashed out Tuesday morning at FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, suggesting that “he will never be able to fix the FBI” based on his reaction to a Justice Department inspector general’s report examining the bureau’s investigation of Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me,” Trump tweeted. “With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!”
Artist Do Fournier
The 434-page report rebutted conservatives’ accusations that top FBI officials were driven by political bias to illegally spy on Trump advisers as part of the probe into Russian election interference, but it also found broad and “serious performance failures” requiring major changes.
In a statement Monday, Wray, a Trump appointee, said he had ordered more than 40 corrective steps to address the report’s recommendations,” adding that he would not hesitate to take “appropriate disciplinary action if warranted.”
Cover-up General Bill Barr is also attacking the report by his own independent Inspector General.
Talking Points Memo: How The DOJ Watchdog Forced Barr To Scramble To Undermine Trump-Russia Probe.
Attorney General Bill Barr scrambled on Monday to keep a main anti-DOJ conspiracy theory going, after Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a 476-page report finding that the FBI was justified in opening its Trump-Russia investigation.
Horowitz found that there was unanimous support within the Justice Department and FBI in July 2016 for opening an investigation into potential contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and found no evidence that anti-Trump bias played a role in the investigation’s start.
Horowitz opened his probe amid allegations from right-wing talking heads and politicos that partisan bias had propelled FBI officials into investigating the Trump campaign….
The result of the whirlpool of allegations arrived in the form of the Horowitz report, which substantively rebutted the accusations and affirmatively found that FBI officials were justified in opening an investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign.
Artist Do Fournier
So, upon the report’s release, both Barr and Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham issued statements disagreeing with Horowitz’s finding.
“Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened,” Durham said in his statement, adding that he was relying on evidence beyond the “component parts of the Justice Department.”
More details at the TPM link.
Vanity Fair: “It Is Not What The Department of Justice Does”: Barr and Durham Go Rogue On The Inspector General’s Report.
…what was truly surprising to some veterans of the Robert F. Kennedy building and the DC bar was the reaction from Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham, who Barr tapped to run a parallel investigation of Crossfire Hurricane and related investigations. Both issued statements throwing significant shade at Horowitz’s report, though, technically, Barr is Horowitz’s boss. “I’ve never seen such an internal DOJ effort to challenge and undermine the IG’s findings,” Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney, told me Monday. “It is not what the Department of Justice does.” [….]
“The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” Barr wrote in a statement. “It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory. Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump’s administration.”
Barr’s decision to publicly distance himself from Horowitz’s findings was met with some astonishment. “No law enforcement purpose is served by the Attorney General announcing that he disagrees with the inspector general’s conclusion that the FBI had an adequate predicate for its investigation of Russia’s contacts with the Trump campaign,” William Jeffress, a white-collar defense attorney who worked on the Valerie Plame leak case, told me. Barr’s missive was reminiscent of the now infamous four-page summary of Robert Mueller’s report, respinning the results of an exhaustive investigation in ways favorable to the president. “The statement by Barr will only deepen the sense that he is a Trump partisan who lacks the independence to lead the Department of Justice,” Jeffress added.
What else is happening? What stories have you been following?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
jjlo
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Recent Comments