The new movie celebrating Neil Armstrong as the first man on the moon slides right past the planting of an American flag on the moon. Forget it, Jack, it's Hollywood and waving the flag is for redneck rube Trump voters, amirite? Anyway, the moon landing was a human achievement, not an American one. Set aside that Kennedy had announjced a space race against the Soviets, who had an early lead due to their expertise with heavy rockets. Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin had challenged American know-how and Kennedy responded with a race to the moon. But humanity won!
But forget Kennedy. By the time Nixon was there to congratulate the astronauts we were a different country. Here is E.B. White writing in the New Yorker back in July 1969:
The moon, it turns out, is a great place for men. One-sixth gravity must be a lot of fun, and when Armstrong and Aldrin went into their bouncy little dance, like two happy children, it was a moment not only of triumph but of gaiety. The moon, on the other hand, is a poor place for flags. Ours looked stiff and awkward, trying to float on the breeze that does not blow. (There must be a lesson here somewhere.) It is traditional, of course, for explorers to plant the flag, but it struck us, as we watched with awe and admiration and pride, that our two fellows were universal men, not national men, and should have been equipped accordingly. Like every great river and every great sea, the moon belongs to none and belongs to all. It still holds the key to madness, still controls the tides that lap on shores everywhere, still guards the lovers who kiss in every land under no banner but the sky. What a pity that in our moment of triumph we did not forswear the familiar Iwo Jima scene and plant instead a device acceptable to all: a limp white handkerchief, perhaps, symbol of the common cold, which, like the moon, affects us all, unites us all.
The report that retired MI-6 dirt-dogger Steele had briefed senior FBI veteran Ohr about the infamous Steel dossier at a July 30 meeting has struck a nerve.
The NY Times has a river of leaks from the Ohr/FBI/Clinton/Comey side explaining their long time relationship. Since both were involved with probing the Russian mob, large parts of the story ring true.
However! Folks with a long memory (or for those to whom it seems like a long time) this theme of 'controversial leaks followed by exculpatory leaks' is a replay of the May 16, 2018 Times story about the genesis of "Crossfire Hurricane". Back then, when the controversy was whether the Steele dossier had fueled the Carter Page FISA warrant, we were assured that "Crossfire Hurricane" had been launched on July 31 in response to the news that George Papadopoulos had been tipped about Russian possession of emails. We can feel the drama in the lead:
WASHINGTON — Within hours of opening an investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in the summer of 2016, the F.B.I. dispatched a pair of agents to London on a mission so secretive that all but a handful of officials were kept in the dark.
Their assignment, which has not been previously reported, was to meet the Australian ambassador, who had evidence that one of Donald J. Trump’s advisers knew in advance about Russian election meddling. After tense deliberations between Washington and Canberra, top Australian officials broke with diplomatic protocol and allowed the ambassador, Alexander Downer, to sit for an F.B.I. interview to describe his meeting with the campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos.
The agents summarized their highly unusual interview and sent word to Washington on Aug. 2, 2016, two days after the investigation was opened. Their report helped provide the foundation for a case that, a year ago Thursday, became the special counsel investigation. But at the time, a small group of F.B.I. officials knew it by its code name: Crossfire Hurricane.
Deep in the story the dossier appears:
The F.B.I. bureaucracy did agents no favors. In July, a retired British spy named Christopher Steele approached a friend in the F.B.I. overseas and provided reports linking Trump campaign officials to Russia. But the documents meandered around the F.B.I. organizational chart, former officials said. Only in mid-September, congressional investigators say, did the records reach the Crossfire Hurricane team.
Mr. Steele was gathering information about Mr. Trump as a private investigator for Fusion GPS, a firm paid by Democrats. But he was also considered highly credible, having helped agents unravel complicated cases.
Hmm. So now we know that the "friend in the F.B.I. overseas" was Ohr, and that Crossfire Hurricane was launched the day after the dossier was presented. Kind of buried the lede there.
To be fair, there is no way the FBI responded exclusively to the dossier by formally opening an investigation one day later. But asking me to believe it took Ohr several weeks to tip off his colleagues? Please.
Just don't call CNN 'Fake News'. Lanny Davis - Mr. Incredible - "unintentionally misspoke" when he claimed Trump fixer Michael Cohen was a witness to Trump Sr. getting advance word of the notorious Trump Tower meeting.
Mueller is determined to sniff out any wrongdoing he can find—on one side.
I was intrigued by this question about the FEC reporting on the funding of the Steele dossier, which I captured by screenshot:
So just what is the law on this? Doesn't this look like a conspiracy by the Hillary campaign, the DNC, the tony law firm Perkins Coie, and Fusion GPS to present false Federal filings? Lock 'em up! Oh, I know, but not even a little wristslap fine?
Democrats argue that who paid for the research is irrelevant to the veracity of its claims, which they say should be thoroughly investigated. Yet some of the Democrats who funded the dossier have been wary of being associated with it. The lead Perkins Coie lawyer representing both the campaign and the D.N.C., Marc Elias, pushed back earlier this year when asked whether his firm was the client for the dossier, whether he possessed it before the election and whether he was involved in efforts to encourage media outlets to write about its contents.
In October, the veteran Democratic consultant Anita Dunn, who is working with Perkins Coie, explained Mr. Elias’s earlier response. “Obviously, he was not at liberty to confirm Perkins Coie as the client at that point, and should perhaps have ‘no commented’ more artfully,” Ms. Dunn wrote in an email.
I would guess the law firm may be worried about some mix of FEC exposure and aggrieved clients, but who knows?
Andrew Sullivan has had some good coverage of the Trump Era but there are some glaring errors in his latest (my emphasis):
Four Trump campaign officials and his longtime lawyer and fixer have now pleaded to or been convicted of felonies; Trump’s now-convicted campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, faces another trial shortly; his media fixer, David Pecker, is now cooperating with authorities, and has, TheWall Street Journal reported, been granted immunity; Trump’s White House counsel talked to the special counsel’s office for 30 hours, without Trump’s knowledge, and, according to the New York Times, because he feared Trump might try to make him a fall guy for obstruction of justice...
All very dramatic but as the Times plainly reports, the White House counsel had permission to chat as part of the White House legal strategy. Where the White House acted strangely was not even carefully de-briefing McGahn after his meetings.
And this is just strange:
I still cannot believe that in this climate there would be 67 votes to convict the president in the Senate. I don’t believe any amount of evidence of even outright treason would be enough. The line will be a simple one: Yes, we knowingly got dirt on our opponent from the Russians. So what? Any campaign would do the same, given a chance.
Uh, that is not a hypothetical - the Hillary campaign did exactly that. They kept it legal by way of lawyers, consultants and cutouts but the Steele dossier relied on dirt from Russians unknown with agendas unknown. What we do know is that on many other issues Putin played on both sides to sow division and confusion. Could Team Putin have been supplying Trump dirt to Steele? That would seem to conflict with the idea that Putin had decided to push hard for Trump. On the other hand, per the possibly politicized Intelligence Community report his other goal was to undermine and de-legitimize whoever won:
The key to the report’s assessment is that Russia’s motives “evolved over the course of the campaign.” When it appeared that Mrs. Clinton was more likely to win, it concluded, the Russian effort focused “on undermining her future presidency.” It noted that Mr. Putin had a particular animus for Mrs. Clinton because he believed she had incited protests against him in 2011.
Try to imagine a world in which Hillary is elected President and then various Putin stooges self-identify as sources for the Steele dossier. That would strain even the well-rehearsed cover-up powers of a Clinton DoJ.
Well. Andrew knows all this. What he had in mind is a mystery.
His conclusion is also a baffler as he mulls the appetite for impeachment:
But what if picking him over the insiders means picking autocracy over the rule of law? The next few months will tell us if enough Americans prefer a criminal president to a Democratic one. I’m genuinely afraid of what the answer may be.
The "next few months" don't seem to refer to the 2020 elections and Pence is not a Democrat. Maybe he meant small 'd' democrat? Again, a puzzle.
But as to his gist, well, yeah, a cornered rat will fight. We all lived through the Clinton years.
Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist has sensible takeaways from the Cohen plea deal. Let me emphasize points 4 and 5.
4. Targeted For Political Connections
...
A big problem for federal prosecutors is that public trust in their application of the rule of law is low because of how they handle political cases. You can read about how Mueller’s FBI routinely abused prosecutorial discretion, including the anthrax case bungling, leniency for Clinton associate Sandy Berger, the disgraceful Scooter Libby prosecution, the railroading of Ted Stevens, and more.
It’s not that Cohen and Manafort aren’t shady people. They are. It’s that the American public can see that Washington D.C. is teeming with shady people and those with the right connections get off scot-free. That is an extremely dangerous situation for the preservation of the republic and trust in her institutions.
And:
5. Campaign Finance Violations Might Implicate Trump, But Might Not
The big excitement in the Resistance over Cohen’s guilty plea is that Cohen says he made illegal campaign contributions by paying two women for non-disclosure agreements. These payments were later reimbursed by Trump. Reimbursements for illegal campaign contributions would be a problem for Trump since he didn’t report them on his Federal Election Commission reports.
...
The most recent historical analog to this situation is the John Edwards case. The 2004 vice presidential nominee for the Democratic Party was charged with taking and conspiring to take illegal contributions in excess of what the law allowed, and lying about it by not including the contributions on forms filed with the Federal Election Commission. The contributions went to his mistress Rielle Hunter, with whom he had a daughter.
The government claimed the payments were campaign contributions since he was in the middle of a campaign and trying to conceal his affair. Edwards, however, said the hush money was to conceal the affair from his wife. That case resulted in zero convictions — one acquittal and a deadlock on five other counts. The Justice Department never tried the five counts again. The Trump situation is different, dealing with reimbursed payments for non-disclosure agreements. If they were considered campaign contributions, it would be covered here.
My perspective: Trump's underlying behavior - the affair and the hush money - are tawdry but not out of line with what voters understood his character to be in November of 2016. And those behaviors are regrettable but not criminal. The crime Trump may have committed,a campaign finance violation could have been easily avoided if he had been advised to write a personal check (perhaps by way of a shell company) and report it all to the FEC. This would have pushed disclosure past the election and given the opacity of the shell companies the truth may well have remained hidden indefinitely.
So now we are supposed to impeach Trump because he got bad legal advice? That is really punishing form over substance.
Or are we meant to impeach him over an alleged affair from ten years ago?
The Trump and Sanders experience clearly showed that a lot of Americans have lost confidence in the Washington Establishment and the power elite (a feeling that is clearly mutual, if MSNBC is a guide). Busting Trump on this sort of 'gotcha' won't bring the country together again.
Let The Resistance bring a real case and change some minds. Or run a real candidate and get rid of Trump the old-fashioned way. We have alternative processes in this country and FEC technicalities followed by an interminable booth review should not be the way we get rid of a President.
I strenuously object to the mockery of eSports by Steven Hayward of Powerline. C'mon! People watch what they play, and (as best I know) esports have yet to add the interminable booth reviews that have made NFL football unwatchable.
The Times had a big Saturday story (the Dept of Oxymorons has allowed that formulation) on the cooperation of White House attorney Dan McGahn with the Mueller investigation.
White House Counsel, Don McGahn, Has Cooperated Extensively in Mueller Inquiry
WASHINGTON — The White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, has cooperated extensively in the special counsel investigation, sharing detailed accounts about the episodes at the heart of the inquiry into whether President Trump obstructed justice, including some that investigators would not have learned of otherwise, according to a dozen current and former White House officials and others briefed on the matter.
In at least three voluntary interviews with investigators that totaled 30 hours over the past nine months, Mr. McGahn described the president’s fury toward the Russia investigation and the ways in which he urged Mr. McGahn to respond to it. He provided the investigators examining whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice a clear view of the president’s most intimate moments with his lawyer.
This was all a part of the legal strategy - the truth will keep you free - urged by Trump's original legal team, which hoped to surprise Mueller by cooperating with him.
Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani suggested Saturday that investigators with the special counsel’s office are “panicking” by leaking information about White House counsel Donald McGahn’s cooperation in an effort to prod the president into testifying.
Say what? My handicapping has the arrows pointing in the opposite direction - Team Trump is leaking this to make the points that Trump has been cooperating and there is no need for Mueller to interview Trump since they already have his story by way of the White House attorney (who strictly speaking represents the office of the Presidency, not the current incumbent).
Do keep in mind that one of their objections to a potential Mueller subpoena is that the President won't be providing essential information. Here we go from Douglas Kmiec, former head of the DoJ OLC under Reagan and Bush, commenting on a letter from Trump's attorneys to Mueller:
Who decides when a presidential interview can be refused or subpoena quashed? The authors of the letter think the question is answered by a lower-court ruling, United States vs. Espy, decided in 1997 during the presidency of Bill Clinton. The letter claims that to overcome a privilege claim, special counsel must show that evidence is obtainable from no other source than the president.
This is overstatement. The court of appeals speculated that the ruling would delay obtaining evidence, not preclude it.
I had tackled that back when the letters were getting attention in these two posts (the second of which focused on the Kmiec article). The upshot was that Team Trump has an arguable but probably losing position, although the factual context will be critically important and is at this point speculative.
But my mind-reading is this: The key United States versus Nixon case covered a subpoena for evidence that would be produced at trial. Here we are talking about a grand jury. The prosecutors are looking for enough evidence to indict, not proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. So I suspect Team Trump will ask, what is Trump's testimony going to add beyond the tale told by the White House attorney?
At trial Trump might be a useful corroborating witness, but for a grand jury? If Trump is telling the same story as his attorney he may have added a bit of confidence but he hasn't added new information. Or, if Trump is telling a different story from his attorney than the case is a muddle, which may hinder rather than help the grand jury (Yeah, Team Trump is just trying to save Mueller from himself, amirite?)
I would guess that Steve Vladeck and Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare would come to a different conclusion about grand jury subpoenas but if the evidentiary standard for indictment is lower than for a conviction at trial, the importance of an appearance by the President ought to be less.
Well - that's my two cent speculation as to where Team Trump is headed with this. But how does a leak by Team Mueller that Trump has been very cooperative and they know just about all the advice he got and what he said in key meetings put pressure on Trump to tell his story?
Is this letter - the wokest letter ever - for real, or just something I read in the flailing NY Times?
How Can I Cure My White Guilt?
The thing about privilege is that it can be used for good.
By Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond Aug. 14, 2018
Dear Sugars,
I’m riddled with shame. White shame. This isn’t helpful to me or to anyone, especially people of color. I feel like there is no “me” outside of my white/upper middle class/cisgender identity. I feel like my literal existence hurts people, like I’m always taking up space that should belong to someone else.
I consider myself an ally. I research proper etiquette, read writers of color, vote in a way that will not harm P.O.C. (and other vulnerable people). I engage in conversations about privilege with other white people. I take courses that will further educate me. I donated to Black Lives Matter. Yet I fear that nothing is enough. Part of my fear comes from the fact that privilege is invisible to itself. What if I’m doing or saying insensitive things without realizing it?
...
I don’t talk about my feelings because it’s hard to justify doing so while people of color are dying due to systemic racism and making this conversation about me would be again centering whiteness. Yet bottling it up makes me feel an existential anger that I have a hard time channeling since I don’t know my place. Instead of harnessing my privilege for greater good, I’m curled up in a ball of shame. How can I be more than my heritage?
How can she (he? xi?) be more than her heritage? It's a puzzle. Another puzzle - is this for real, or has the NY Times flipped the keys to The Onion?
You know what? Go with your gut and bet 'The Onion'. As best I can tell, the Times writers and editors are serious. Authorship of the letter however, is claimed by a spoof comic who - take a seat, please - mocks the eternally woke.
Well, she got me. I can't keep up. The Times has gone over a PC Cliff with the arrival of Sarah Jeong and I don't know what's real anymore. I'm a beaten middle-aged white man. I'm a goblin, and I'm groveling. Just ONE editor, please... I'm begging now...
MEANWHILE, BACK ON MEMORY LANE: I saw through the Times when one of their many well-informed and exhaustively researched editorials on gun control linked to a rival of The Onion (it took them a mere four months to run a correction and change the link). But this game will get harder now that they are re-branding with Onion material.
In the course of relentlessly not covering the Bruce Ohr non-story Katie Benner of the flailing NY Times swerves into creative fiction (my emphasis):
Ms. Ohr’s contract work for Fusion GPS on matters related to Russia has prompted an unsubstantiated theory that the origins of the special counsel’s investigation are tainted. And emails that the Justice Department shared with Congress showing that in 2016 Mr. Ohr was in contact with Mr. Steele and with Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, have only added momentum to that theory.
Republicans in Congress say those emails suggest that Mr. Steele and Fusion GPS, which was hired to dig up dirt on Mr. Trump by a wealthy Republican donor and later by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, worked inappropriately with the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.
They have also argued that the government inappropriately used the dossier, paid for in part by the Democrats, to apply for a warrant to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign official.
Paid for "in part" by the Democrats?!? Not even the Times has been reporting that - here is Kenneth Vogel from Oct 25, 2017:
The Trump Dossier: What We Know and Who Paid for It
...
Who paid for it?
During the Republican primaries, a research firm called Fusion GPS was hired by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, to unearth potentially damaging information about Mr. Trump. The Free Beacon — which was funded by a major donor supporting Mr. Trump’s rival for the party’s nomination, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — told Fusion GPS to stop doing research on Mr. Trump in May 2016, as Mr. Trump was clinching the Republican nomination.
After Mr. Trump secured the nomination, Fusion GPS was hired on behalf of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and the D.N.C. by their law firm, Perkins Coie, to compile research about Mr. Trump, his businesses and associates — including possible connections with Russia. It was at that point that Fusion GPS hired Mr. Steele, who has deep sourcing in Russia, to gather information.
The WaPo has a similar timeline showing that Steele was hired after the Democrats picked up the Fusion-GPS ball.
The timing and funding of the Steele dossier is not controversial. How can the Times be mis-reporting this at this late date?
Hi too? The controversial Congressman and Deputy DNC Chair Keith Ellison has been accused of domestic violence two days before a critical primary. He's issued a bit of a non-denial denial, and of course Hillary's rule is "Believe The Woman, unless she's accusing a Democrat", so who knows what happens next?
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has lots more. My issue with the Ellison denial is that the ex-girlfriend alleges that most of the abuse was psychological; she only describes one incident of physical abuse. This is from the CBS coverage of the denial:
Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison on Sunday denied an allegation from an ex-girlfriend that he had once dragged her off a bed while screaming obscenities at her — an allegation that came just days before a Tuesday primary in which the congressman is among several Democrats running for state attorney general.
The allegation first surfaced Saturday night from Karen Monahan after her son alleged in a Facebook post that he had seen hundreds of angry text messages from Ellison, some threatening his mother. He also wrote he had viewed a video in which Ellison dragged Monahan off the bed by her feet. Monahan, a Minneapolis political organizer, said via Twitter that what her son posted was "true."
Ellison denied the allegation of physical abuse. A spokesman for his campaign also denied the congressman had sent threatening text messages.
Hmm, Ellison might be a lying, philandering psychologically abusive person (SO Clintonian! Either one.) as alleged by Ellison, and he's not denying it. O the other hand, should every bad boyfriend be disqualified from public office even if he avoids physical abuse?
On the third hand, Minnesota Democrats could not possibly be concerned with the opinion of a middle-aged white guy from out of state. I'm sure they will choose judiciously.
He explains that he does not favor judging people for their worst tweets and goes on:
Not surprisingly, some on the left pilloried me for that argument. So allow me to apply precisely the same logic in defense of my soon-to-be colleague at The Times, Korean-American technology writer Sarah Jeong, who is joining the editorial board with her own extensive history of unfortunate tweets.
Among these: “White men are bull—”; “#CancelWhitePeople”; “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men” and “f— white women lol.” She has also bashed the police, called for censoringa fellow journalist, and believed the 2014 University of Virginia rape hoax, in the course of which she lashed out at “white men” and “white college boys.”
We should call many of these tweets for what they are: racist. I’ve seen some acrobatic efforts to explain why Jeong’s tweets should be treated as “quasi-satirical,” hyperbolical and a function of “social context.” But the criterion for racism is either objective or it’s meaningless: If liberals get to decide for themselves who is or isn’t a racist according to their political lights, conservatives will be within their rights to ignore them.
Hmm, with supporters like these who needs critics?
But the real shocker is the NY Times comments section. I clicked on the Readers Choices and copied the most up-voted comments as of roughly 10 PM Thursday. Here we go - pretty uniformly the Times readers who passed by this column are not happy with the Times positioning.
This is the Times so it is no great trick to find readers echoing the "It's not racism if its directed at whites" line of reasoning, but there are many fewer buyers of that logic.
So here's hoping - even though the NY Times editors won't stand up to them (or have become them!) the lunatic fringe is still the fringe.
Doc Drezner thinks political gravity is working on Trump. His approval rating, while stable, lags where it might be considering the buoyant economy.
I don't know. Evaluating Trump's strategy is impossible without describing his objectives. Simply assuming he wants conventional things like a House Republican majority after November assumes Trump thinks (reacts/intuits/behaves) like a conventional politician. And we can all agree there is little that is conventional about Trump.
So for example - suppose Trump's focus is his own re-election in 2020; bailing out the Republican establishment is not a priority. Would a Democrat-controlled House hurt or help in in 2020? Well, there is an excellent chance of endless investigations and impeachment. But does that hurt him?
One might think so. On the other hand, Trump has exploited and exacerbated the divisions of an already divided nation and will surely continue to do so. He may relish the idea of keeping the pot at a boil. In a national screaming match judgment and experience are devalued and the guy with the biggest megaphone often wins.
So if he has a strategy that extends beyond today's impulse what is it? Saving the House for Republicans? Or in 2020 running against a do-nothing Democratic Congress that focused on Fake News investigations rather than working to pass his agenda (whatever that is or whether he actually has one)? I don't know, obviously - it would not be my advice to let the House slide but then, I certainly would not have advised him to attack LeBron. We have a strange leader in stranger times.
It's Saturday and I am re-printing my brush with Twitter glory. The topic is a principled boycott of the Times over the hiring of hater Sarah Jeong. Huge collection of her tweets here.
My kids laughed so hard I may have to gift two of them subscriptions to the Times. Not exactly the plan, but plans change.
The NY Times hires a racist to their editorial board but its all good - she regrets it, they don't condone it, and anyway, the Alt-right made her do it.
The Sarah Jeong story has unfolded since her hiring was announced by the Times on Wednesday. David French and Andrew Sullivan are excellent at explaining the contemporary progressive view that marginalized and oppressed ethnic groups and genders (currently including Harvard Law School grads writing at the Times) can experience racism but not be guilty of it. Yeah, yeah.
Robby Soave at Reason points out that a more complete appreciation of the Jeong Tweets does not seem to support her defense that she was merely responding to haters. Whatever. The Times hired her, they endorsed her, and they should own her. And when Trump reads some of her tweets at his next rally ('Dumbass f***ing white people' and 'groveling goblins' are sure to get mentioned), the Times can explain that they are not enemies of the people.
Legal Duty to Report Your Coworkers' Off-the-Job Crimes?
That's what a New Jersey appellate court seems to have created, based on the theory that a criminal's coworkers somehow have a special duty to the victim -- even when the crime has nothing at all to do with the job.
In my opinion a sympathetic plaintiff wanted a defendant who could actually write a big check and the court played ball. If I were a franchisee at McDonalds I would be deeply troubled.
This NY Times coverage and revision is eye-catching. From the first pass, excerpted at Boing-Boing (or Mother Jones):
“Like the Russian interference campaign in 2016, the recently detected campaign dealt with divisive social issues. Facebook discovered coordinated activity around issues like a sequel to last year’s deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. Coordinated activity was also detected around #AbolishICE, a left-wing campaign on social media that seeks to end the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, according to two people briefed on the findings.”
So the Russkies, or whomever, are playing both sides, as in 2016. But wait - a revision!:
Like the Russian interference campaign in 2016, the recently detected campaign dealt with divisive social issues.
Facebook discovered coordinated activity around issues like a sequel to last year’s deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. Specifically, a page called “Resisters,” which interacted with one Internet Research Agency account in 2017, created an event called “No Unite the Right 2 — DC” to serve as a counterprotest to the white nationalist gathering, scheduled to take place in Washington in August. Mr. Gleicher said “inauthentic” administrators for the “Resisters” page went as far as to coordinate with administrators for five other apparently real pages to co-host the event, publicizing details about transportation and other logistics.
Mr. Gleicher said it disabled the event on Tuesday and notified 2,600 users of the site who had indicated interest in attending the event.
Coordinated activity was also detected around #AbolishICE...
So wait - now this suspicious group is piggybacking with, or co-opting, or attempting to discredit The Resistance.
So if the Russians are helping to energize the Resistance then any November Blue Wave is really a Red Wave? Baffling.
The NY Times covers the latest strategy in Afghanistan. I am reminded of someone's insight which I'll plagiarize and paraphrase as "Afghanistan is not a country - it is a barren moonscape on the map where no one could form a country".
For anyone who has been laughing too much today this NY Times analysis of political comedy by Jason Zinoman should bring the clouds right back into your life. Why, he wonders, is political comedy not moving the needle of public opinion?
At the Rally to Restore Sanity in 2010, Jon Stewart delivered a funny political speech to a crowd of his fans on the mall in Washington, D.C. He praised reasonableness, compromise and the virtue of working together with our opponents. Insanity however proved resilient. Last month, he told an audience that it was an error to mistake cultural power for real power, adding: “I, being a part of that machine and mechanism, do feel oddly culpable.”
For Mr. Stewart, who more than anyone elevated the political stature of the late-night talk show, to make such a concession is jarring. But it fits the mood right now, one defined not by the army of his television successors but by the Australian stand-up Hannah Gadsby. Her ferocious special “Nanette” tapped into a growing cultural anxiety about the limits of comedy. She skewered the nature of jokes, arguing that because they inevitably lead to incomplete stories, they evade difficult truths.
And in the Age of Trump:
In the past year or so, there has been a backlash to the growing role of comedy, and as with nearly every cultural trend these days, Donald J. Trump has something to do with it. He became famous in part because of comedy institutions; he was a fixture on roasts, late-night talk shows and Howard Stern. But once he ran for president, comedians obsessed about him as much as cable-news hosts did. Despite the endless internet headlines trumpeting how this host eviscerated him or that comic destroyed Mr. Trump, none did. This clarified what comedy could accomplish.
On her new Netflix series, Michelle Wolf, a veteran of “The Daily Show,” brilliantly satirized the self-importance of current comedy, skewering the entire genre of righteous political humor that Mr. Stewart gave birth to, mocking its ineffectuality while breaking down the hack conventions of a bit that always ends with the same Trump insult. “Writing jokes is hard. It’s really hard,” she said. “You know what’s easier? An earnest plea.”
Where Ms. Gadsby suggests that jokes obscure a comedian’s ability to tell the full truth, Ms. Wolf argues that the imperative to go viral with a sincere insult has gotten in the way of being funny.
I love a mystery - what's going ? A suggested explanation - blame MeToo! (That is as close as he comes to making a joke but I think he is serious):
Then there were the many comedians accused of sexual misconduct. Their private behavior was often at odds with their public profile, and since audiences put more stock in the authenticity of a comic’s constructed stage persona than, say, a fictional character in a play, attitudes toward comedy grew darker.
OK, blaming MeToo is bold, so points for that.
And on to the deeper 'explanation', or at least the start:
But the best way to understand this new skepticism about comedy is as a corrective to the wildly romantic and expansive view that has been ascendant for decades but is, historically, an anomaly. A dominant theory of jokes for most of Western civilization, superiority theory, as it’s now called in academia, rests on the idea that laughter has an abusive core, that ridiculing something else makes us feel better about ourselves. This is why Aristotle wondered if certain kinds of jokes (or “jesting” as he called it) should be banned.
But starting perhaps with Norman Cousins’s 1979 memoir, “Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by a Patient,” which described how a steady diet of the Marx Brothers and “Candid Camera” helped cure himself of a possibly fatal disease, a new optimism about humor emerged. Studies about the benefits of comedy proliferated. You can find articles claiming laughter lowers your blood pressure, reduces stress and anxiety, burns calories, boosts your immune system and even diminishes your chance of heart disease and dementia.
I know that I am just a troglodyte knuckle-dragging old white guy but I am not seeing a contradiction between lower blood pressure and reduced stress on the one hand and feeling better about yourself on the other. Nor would it occur to me that most of the late-night assaults on Republicans are about something other than inducing a feeling of superiority in the audience. C'mon, the Desolation of Smug has been a liberal shouting point for a while. And yes, its funny to think that comics, some of who once prided themselves on being transgressive, might now simply be functioning as outriders for the PC Police.
Well. Might it be that two decades of comedy with a 'conservatives suck' punchline still amuses the choir (and helps keep them in line, as do the Twitter mobs) but no longer changes minds? Unexplored territory! Although to be fair, Mr. Zinoman does link to Michele Wolf (Yes, of White House Correspondents Dinner infamy) and her bit about the stale, formulaic Trump-bashing that is the life blood of late night comedy. She won't get there but right now it is conservatism that's transgressive.
The NY Times covers Mueller's ongoing "obstruction" investigation:
Mueller Examining Trump’s Tweets in Wide-Ranging Obstruction Inquiry
His tweets.
Do let me add - I assume that in the other universe I could find people rubbing their hands in glee that Trump will finally get busted for Tweeting. Ahh, sweet justice!
And under my sun (still yellow, and what I can see of the sky is blue) people are marveling that Mueller might actually base a report to Congress on Trump's Tweets. This is how we run mysterious collusion ops these days - Twitter?
I can't even decide if the source of this leak meant to make Mueller look good, or ridiculous.
The Trump-Cohen tape is out on CNN and this "cash' element of the controversy is crazy:
Cohen told Trump about his plans to set up a company and finance the purchase of the rights from American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer.
"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," Cohen said in the recording, likely a reference to American Media head David Pecker.
Trump interrupts Cohen asking, "What financing?" according to the recording. When Cohen tells Trump, "We'll have to pay." Trump is heard saying "pay with cash" but the audio is muddled and it's unclear whether he suggests paying with cash or not paying. Cohen says, "no, no" but it is not clear what is said next.
No payment was ever made from Trump, Rudy Giuliani, the President's attorney, has said. Giuliani has previously acknowledged that the recorded discussion related to the buying the story rights.
And then...
Davis later added: "Ladies and gentlemen, if you voted for Donald Trump, listen to the tape and ask yourself: Is Donald Trump lying when he said he didn't use the word 'cash' and accuses Michael Cohen of using the word 'cash'? Cohen has been disparaged. Cohen has been insulted and called all sorts of things by people around Donald Trump."
Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, refuted that the tape shows Trump was offering a cash payment.
"Whoever is telling Davis that cash in that conversation refers to green currency is lying to him," Futerfas told CNN. "There's no transaction done in green currency. It doesn't happen. The whole deal never happened. If it was going to happen, it would be a payment to a large company that would obviously be accompanied by an agreement of sale. Those documents would be prepared by lawyers on both sides."
Cash, in the conversation, was in reference to how a deal would be financed, Futerfas added.
"The word cash came up in the context of the distinction between financing, which is referenced, and no financing, which means a full payment, a total one-time payment. That's the context in which the word cash is used," he said. "Anyone who knows anything about the company or how the President does business knows there is no green cash. Everything is documented. Every penny is documented."
I refuse to doublecheck but I am confident Cohen had a contract with Ms. MacDougal, or Stormy, or both. No mention of a suitcase with unmarked twenties of a bag of Trump Casino chips.
Davis told Cuomo the tape clearly shows that it’s Trump who says “cash” and declared, “Richard Nixon couldn’t spin the tape that did him in, and there’s no way that Mr. Giuliani, who knows from being U.S. Attorney, the only people who use cash are drug dealers and mobsters. Cash is not what you do, and it was Michael Cohen who said, ‘No, no, no, no.’ And Donald Trump, despite what Rudy Giuliani said publicly, the tape contradicts Mr. Giuliani and the word ‘cash’ is heard by everyone.”
Well. On Wall Street people talk about cash financing all time and never mean green bills. I have even bought a car in a "cash deal", or at least, in a deal that involved neither a lease nor any financing (Yeah, that's how us high rollers roll. Four year old Highlander, but whatever...). And it's not just me!
Buying a Car: Should You Pay With Cash if You Can?
It may seem like a smart idea: You're buying a car, and you can afford to write one check for the entire vehicle, which means you'll never have to make a payment. You should go ahead and do that, right? Not necessarily. We explain why it isn't always a great idea to buy a car with cash, even if you can afford to do so.
Wait, what? Buy with cash by "writing a check"? Whatever could that mean?
As to the notion that only drug dealers and mobsters use actual cash, hmm - maybe that is why so many people are afraid of their plumber. It's not Trump, it's the tax evasion! I guess Mr. Davis has never met a small businessman who sometimes mis-estimates his business receipts, at least as far as tax reporting goes. I've heard it happens.
Well. I have thought for a while we were at least making progress through the foothills on the way to Peak Stupid. Now I'm wondering if we are stuck on Mesa Stupid.
BUT THEN AGAIN! Can't spell "Mensa" without "Mesa"!
How a Trump Decision Revealed a G.O.P. Memo’s Shaky Foundation
WASHINGTON — When President Trump declassified a memo by House Republicans in February that portrayed the surveillance of a former campaign adviser as scandalous, his motivation was clear: to give congressional allies and conservative commentators another avenue to paint the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian election interference as tainted from the start.
But this past weekend, Mr. Trump’s unprecedented decision, which he made over the objections of law enforcement and intelligence officials, had a consequence that revealed his gambit’s shaky foundation. The government released the court documents in which the F.B.I. made its case for conducting the surveillance — records that plainly demonstrated that key elements of Republicans’ claims about the bureau’s actions were misleading or false.
"Plainly false"! Once again the progressives own the Trumpsters!
The weekend release of a highly-redacted version of the FBI's application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to wiretap onetime Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page has renewed the argument over the Nunes memo — the brief report produced by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes detailing problems in the application. From the time of the memo's release in February, Democrats and some in the press have denounced it as a collection of lies and mischaracterizations. On Saturday night, the denouncing started again. "The only thing the newly released FISA documents show is that Republicans have been lying for months," the lefty think tank Center for American Progress saidin a typical response.
Now, however, we have both the memo and the FISA application, if in a blacked-out state. We can compare the two. And doing so shows the Nunes memo was overwhelmingly accurate. Perhaps some Democrats do not believe it should have been written, or they dispute what it included and left out, or they do not agree with its conclusions, but it was in fact accurate.
"Overwhelmingly accurate"? That is not how we spell "plainly false". So what's going on?
We can cut through the thunder and fog and come to the key controversy. Back to the Savage response:
One central issue was whether the F.B.I. gave the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court sufficient information about the funding of Mr. Steele’s research to understand that he had been commissioned to dig up information about Mr. Trump’s links to Russia by someone with a political motive, even though he had been a neutral source in the past.
The Republican memo issued in February said the F.B.I. had failed to “disclose or reference the role of the D.N.C., Clinton campaign or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior D.O.J. and F.B.I. officials.” But Democrats at the time contended that the court had been told that the research had politically motivated origins.
The application contains a page-length explanation that does alert the court that the person who commissioned Mr. Steele’s research was “likely looking for information to discredit” Mr. Trump’s campaign. It goes on to explain why, notwithstanding Mr. Steele’s “reason for conducting the research,” the F.B.I. believed it was credible.
Republicans had also faulted the application for not explicitly identifying Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee by name. But that criticism ignored the fact that law enforcement officials were following a general policy not to name Americans, even referring to Mr. Trump only as “Candidate #1” in renewal applications despite noting that he was now the president-elect and then the president.
David Kris, an expert on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act who served in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, dismissed the notion that the intelligence court judges had been misled.
“Now we can see that the footnote disclosing Steele’s possible bias takes up more than a full page in the applications, so there is literally no way the FISA Court could have missed it,” he wrote on the blog Lawfare. “The F.B.I. gave the court enough information to evaluate Steele’s credibility.”
So, Mr. Savage describes this as a "central issue" and assures us it is all good because the applicants explained that the source of the allegations against Trump and his people may have had a political motive. Now back to the glorious son of York for his version:
The fifth paragraph:
a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele's efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.
That is accurate. Readers will search the FISA application in vain for any specific mention of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign funding of the dossier. For the most part, names were not used in the application, but Donald Trump was referred to as "Candidate #1," Hillary Clinton was referred to as "Candidate #2," and the Republican Party was referred to as "Political Party #1." Thus, the FISA application could easily have explained that the dossier research was paid for by "Candidate #2" and "Political Party #2," meaning the Democrats. And yet the FBI chose to describe the situation this way, in a footnote: "Source #1...was approached by an identified U.S. person, who indicated to Source #1 that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1's ties to Russia...The identified U.S. person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1's ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1's campaign."
Democrats argue that the FISA Court judges should have been able to figure out, from that obscure description, that the DNC and Clinton campaign paid for the dossier. That seems a pretty weak argument, but in any case, the Nunes memo's statement that the FISA application did not disclose or reference the role of the DNC and the Clinton campaign is undeniably true.
So when Nunes et al say the application did not explicitly disclose the Democratic source they are, well, right but wrong in TimesWorld.
And why do we care? isn't hinting around at the source in a BIG footnote sufficient disclosure? I read that in the Times!
Oh, please. Start with a simple thought exercise by comparing these alternative FISA applications:
(a) The Obama DoJ wants to drop the power of the surveillance state on associates of the Republican nominee for President based on rumors and innuendo dug up by an establishment Republican backing more moderate candidates;
or
(b) The Obama DoJ want to investigate the Trump team based on rumors and allegations paid for by the campaign of Obama's anointed successor.
Which application seems more likely to be approved by a judge? Is "The Democrat heirs to the current Democratic administration bought some dirt on Trump and want us to check it out" really no different from "Some other Republican bought dirt on Trump but we think it is worth checking out"?
Seriously, if this is a tough question, well, the questions will get progressively more difficult. And since you ask, it was conservatives at the Washington Free Beacon that initially hired Fusion GPS. Steele only got involved after the project was picked up by Team Hillary surrogates. So who knows what the judges knew or guessed.
Or let's look at this from a different perspective. These FISA applications are double top secret and probably won't show up even on Hillary's email server. If (in the normal course) they will never see the light of day, why is the DoJ playing "Twenty Questions" instead of just writing the simple truth - this application relies on research funded by Hillary's campaign?
My guess - regardless of any rationalizations from TimesWorld, the DoJ applicants understood that telling the judges the unvarnished truth might create an awkward moment or two. I picture a response from the judge along the lines of "Seriously, Obama wants us to approve the of use of Hillary gossip to spy on Trump? Pull the other one, it plays the theme from 'Law and Order'".
To smooth the road the applicants opted for an "Ask me no questions and I'l tell you no lies" approach. One recalls the classic moment from M*A*S*H between the hapless Col. Blake and the omniscient company clerk Radar O'Riley, who was busily managing some paperwork:
"What am I signing Radar?"
"I'd tell you sir but then you'd know."
"Oh, right". Sighs, takes pen, signs.
I would hardly be surprised to learn that Washington Establishment judges of either party would be deeply concerned about the prospect of a Trump Presidency. But I also think they might prefer just a bit of cover before they sign off on allowing the current administration to unleash the FBI and the NSA on its political opponents. The FISA court is sometimes described as a rubberstamp, although supporters point out that the DoJ knows what an application needs to look like to get approved. And the judges do work with the DoJ on problematic applications. Which of course is my point.
I'm guessing, of course. No doubt in TimesWorld its an outrageous lie to suggest that the DoJ applicants were trying to write their way around a cosmetically ghastly problem. But I think the DoJ knew perfectly well the judges wouldn't or couldn't handle the truth.
Jim Geraghty rounds up the reaction from Trump's normal supporters to his effort in Helsinki.
Do let me add: Try to set aside the cognitive dissonance of watching the Blame America First crowd pose as uber-hawks. Try to ignore the years of "Bush lied, people died" morphing into "The CIA said it so it must be so". if you want to, hold onto the idea of a Deep State alliance of both party establishments playing political games with this Russian thing in order to undermine Trump's hostile takeover of the Republican Party.
Despite all that, many of Trump's supporters didn't like what they saw and heard. But not Sean Hannity!
This is an odd story from last spring by Jonathan Swan of Axios as reporters circle for the Trump-Putin meeting:
Scoop: The time Putin actually enraged Trump
Earlier this year in the thick of his election campaign, Vladimir Putin released a propaganda video promoting Russia's "invincible" new generation of nuclear weapons.
Why it matters: One scene in particular caught President Trump's attention, according to sources with direct knowledge. The motion graphic in Putin's video appeared to show missiles raining down on Florida — the home of Trump's Mar-a-Lago club.
Apparently in a phone call Trump told Putin what he really thought:
In the source's recollection, Trump told Putin he thought it was "outrageous" that he'd put out the nuclear weapons video.
Trump said, "I called up Theresa [May] and Angela [Merkel] and they agree with me," the source recalled.
"And the other day, I saw you sayyou need a new arms deal," Trump told Putin, in the source's recollection. "So I guess that was just election talk. I'm glad to hear you weren't serious about it."
Then Trump added: "I’ve already increased defense spending, modernized our nuclear weapons...We can do more, so if you want to do an arms race you’ll lose."
OK, this is a friendly leak intended to reassure us that Trump can be a tough guy. I'm delighted to get some reassurance.
Based on reactions people are watching two entirely different Strzok hearings with different casts and directors.
I take special umbrage to this:
“I understand we are living in a political era in which insults and insinuation often drown out honesty and integrity,” Mr. Strzok said, continuing: “I have the utmost respect for Congress’s oversight role, but I truly believe that today’s hearing is just another victory notch in Putin’s belt and another milestone in our enemies’ campaign to tear America apart.”
Yeah, yeah - sort of like how anti-war protestors were pro-Saddam, or pro-ISIS.
Or, more to the point, the original Russian plan seemed to be to divide the US electorate and de-legitimize the eventual winner, whomever that might have been. So one might just as well say that every time some member of The Resistance denounces Trump as a Russian pawn, Putin laughs. Does Strzok truly believe that this FBI 'investigation' is a victory notch in Putin's belt? Probably not.
Wow. Al the kids and the coach are out. Once the rescuers complete their own exit it is Mission Accomplished.
England is still alive in the World Cup so the Brits may have several Finest Hours this week (as their government unravels) but still - I would start these guys off with a ticker tape parade while I figured out how to really give them a show.
And the Thai Royal Navy SEALs deserve a nod. I do like this, from the Thai Navy SEAL Facebook page:
“We are not sure if this is a miracle, a science, or what. All the thirteen Wild Boars are now out of the cave.”
In other news, fun Resistance Porn from Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine - what if the Russians co-opted Trump all the way back in 1987? No, I'm serious, he is serious:
It is often said that Donald Trump has had the same nationalistic, zero-sum worldview forever. But that isn’t exactly true. Yes, his racism and mendacity have been evident since his youth, but those who have traced the evolution of his hypernationalism all settle on one year in particular: 1987. Trump “came onto the political stage in 1987 with a full-page ad in the New York Times attacking the Japanese for relying on the United States to defend it militarily,” reported Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The president has believed for 30 years that these alliance commitments are a drain on our finite national treasure,” a White House official told the Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin. Tom Wright, another scholar who has delved into Trump’s history, reached the same conclusion. “1987 is Trump’s breakout year. There are only a couple of examples of him commenting on world politics before then.”
And what happened in 1987? Trump went to Moscow to talk about hotel deals, stayed in a room that was surely bugged and then... and then...
Trump returned from Moscow fired up with political ambition. He began the first of a long series of presidential flirtations, which included a flashy trip to New Hampshire. Two months after his Moscow visit, Trump spent almost $100,000 on a series of full-page newspaper ads that published a political manifesto. “An open letter from Donald J. Trump on why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves,” as Trump labeled it, launched angry populist charges against the allies that benefited from the umbrella of American military protection. “Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests?”
Trump’s letter avoided the question of whom the U.S. was protecting those countries from. The primary answer, of course, was the Soviet Union. After World War II, the U.S. had created a liberal international order and underwritten its safety by maintaining the world’s strongest military. A central goal of Soviet, and later Russian, foreign policy was to split the U.S. from its allies.
The safest assumption is that it’s entirely coincidental that Trump launched a national campaign, with himself as spokesman, built around themes that dovetailed closely with Soviet foreign-policy goals shortly after his Moscow stay. Indeed, it seems slightly insane to contemplate the possibility that a secret relationship between Trump and Russia dates back this far. But it can’t be dismissed completely. How do you even think about the small but real chance — 10 percent? 20 percent? — that the president of the United States has been covertly influenced or personally compromised by a hostile foreign power for decades?
So Trump went into the tank for the Soviets in 1987 based on controversies about our trade deficit with Japan and the ongoing Reagan defense budgets. OK, wow. Chait really missed the lead here - Reagan's defense budgets were controversial from Day One of his Administration, our trade deficit with Japan was a problem from Day One, and it as if as if the entire US government had been co-opted by the Soviets. Here is the WaPo, Sept 1981:
Japan's 'Free Ride'
[T]he amazing strength of Japan's economy is reflected in the prospect of a $15 billion trade surplus with the United States this year, despite "voluntary" quotas that have been placed on shipments of Japanese cars.
President Reagan's trade ambassador, William Brock, has been warning the Japanese government at top levels that such a surplus is "unacceptable," and his point has been driven home by a number of influential senators and congressmen who have given Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki something new to think about:
Unless Japan pitches in more money for global defense--giving up what the Americans like to call a "free ride"-- American protectionist sentiments will be deepened even further.
This trade-defense "link" has brought Japanese-American relations to a low ebb in an up-and-down cycle.
More from the CSM in 1982, this time with Democratic Congressman involved. I should add that the author, Robert W. Barnett, was denounced by Joe McCarthy as a Communist sympathizer; he was eventually exonerated but maybe McCarthy and Chait are onto something:
Ways to end Japan's 'free ride'
ByRobert W. Barnett, Robert W. Barnett, former US deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, is a resident associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Japan hears Americans, particularly US congressmen, harping on Japan's free ride on America's defense investment. That charge flashed like lightning through all Japan last November when North Carolina Congressman Stephen Neal proposed that Washington tax 2 percent of Japan's GNP to help pay the Pentagon's bills. It recurs constantly, as is now the case in Congressman Stephen Solarz's hearings on Capitol Hill.
Let's flash forward to 1987 when Trump bursts onto the scene, to mockery here:
A Little Backbone Would Help U.s. End Japan`s Free Ride As Defense Dependent
COMMENTARY
September 7, 1987|By RICHARD REEVES, Universal Press Syndicate
It`s always fun to laugh at a billionaire, especially at an egomaniac like Donald J. Trump. It seems to be our only revenge as he tears apart the city to build towering monuments to his young self.
However, after the laughter...
To give Trump some credit, he chose an idea whose talking time has come -- at least as attractive political rhetoric. Only a few days before, I listened to another political overreacher, Rep. Pat Schroeder, say just about the same thing. Her little presidential campaign, as far as I could tell, is based on the idea that the United States` greatest problem is the need for more day-care centers and that can be solved by having the Japanese volunteer to pay for them in exchange for the protection of U.S. ships and planes.
Hmm, Trump echoing liberal talking points - who knew?
Finally, in 1988 the Rolling Stone claimed everyone was getting in on the act, although the author only cites Reagan Hawk Richard Perle and liberal darling Pat Schroeder:
Why Can’t Our Allies Defend Themselves?
While America pours billions into defense, our NATO allies and Japan are getting a free ride. But how can we get them to pay for protection they think is unnecessary?
By William Greider
Aside from denouncing drug smugglers, the most popular new theme of this year’s presidential campaign is bashing our allies – the feckless Germans and Japanese, even the Danes, Norwegians and Spanish. Every candidate, including the squishy vice-president, has demanded or at least suggested that our NATO allies and Japan pay for a larger share of our mutual defense.
“The Japanese case is scandalous,” says one authority in the field. “The political and psychological excuses that Japan has sold a succession of American administrations, including this one, for not sharing the defense burden equitably are little more than a gloss on a policy of chronic freeloading. “It is galling to be lectured by those whom we defend about the need to control our budget deficit. Indeed, if we were to reduce our defense effort to, say, the level of Germany, we could balance the American budget this year.”
Spoiler alert - he is quoting Richard Perle there:
This is the historic contradiction facing the American empire: The United States is financing the defense of its economic competitors, assuming costs and risks that they refuse to accept. Meanwhile, they are trafficking with the ‘enemy,’ even selling the reds high-tech hardware for modern weapons systems. The long-term consequences for America are clearly visible: The economy gets steadily weaker, deeper in debt and less competitive while our supposed allies ride the advantage by investing their capital in productive enterprises. The allies, it seems, do not take the Cold War “threat” as seriously as American political leaders do. For the Europeans and the Japanese, it’s a good deal, and they have no incentive to change. For Americans, it’s not such a good deal. As Representative Patricia Schroeder first observed long ago, “We have all the burdens of empire and none of the benefits.”
Some of the harshest observations about our allies, such as those quoted above, do not come from Pat Schroeder, Jesse Jackson or dovish left-wing wimps but from Mr. Hawk himself – Richard Perle. Recently retired as assistant secretary of defense for international security, Perle was the bristling intellect of Reagan’s Pentagon. No one believes more fervently in the Cold War struggle. No one plotted more skillfully for the Reagan arms buildup. Now Perle acknowledges that when he was in government, he spent a lot of energy hiding the freeloading of our allies.
Well. Trump's 1987 idea was hardly original and if it was Soviet influenced then we have a serious problem with American governance since a lot of the local had (and have) problems with trade deficits going side-by-side with lax defense spending by our allies.
BENTSEN: Well, I've told you what I'd do about trade and trying to help turn that situation around. But what we also should do is get them to give us more burden sharing when it comes to national defense. We have a situation today where, on a per capita basis, people in Western Europe are spending about one-third as much as we are in our country. And then when you go to Japan, where we're spending 6-1/2 percent on defense of the democracies, they're spending one percent. I met with some of the Japanese business leaders, talking to them about it. And I said, you know, we have 50,000 troops here in Japan, protecting the democracies of Asia. And it costs $3.5 billion a year. You're the number two economic power in the world. You ought to measure up to that responsibility and carry some of that cost. I said, if we were not doing what we're doing, we'd have a big budget surplus. And I said, you'd have chaos, because you get 55 percent of your oil from the Persian Gulf, and you wouldn't have the U.S. Navy down there to take care of that. Now, the Senator from Indiana, when we passed a resolution in the United States Senate to ask for burden sharing on that cost to keep those sea lanes open from the Japanese, he votes against that. I don't understand that.
Another very encouraging jobs report, with just one quibble - if the job market is so tight, why aren't wages rising? One factor - formerly discouraged workers are re-entering the work force (good!) but that holds down wage increases and actually raised the reported unemployment rate this month.
Tick tock. Democrats hoping for a bad economy to bolster their inevitable Blue Wave might want to start working on a fresh fantasy.
Good golly, this story about the boys soccer team trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand for nearly two weeks (and counting) is amazing.
Finding them was one thing. Getting boys with no diving experience out of a tricky flooded underground cave is another. And the caves will probably be flooded for the rest of the rainy season, so another four months.
“Even if they can’t swim, a rescue diver should be able to guide them along,” Dr. Lavonas said. “The diver will have lights. Obviously, these are young boys and they’re terrified. It’s not going to be an easy rescue, but it should be O.K.”
"They're terrified"? Has he met any boys, because this sounds like adult logic to me. C'mon, they're invincible, immortal, and incapable of guessing just how difficult an underwater scuba dive can be. So don't tell 'em! Project confidence and make it work.
Fortunately, they are not in America, where, after listening to to the mandatory full disclosure of everything that could possibly go wrong I am afraid to let my dentist clean my teeth. And why I still walk across the street without demanding police assistance remains a mystery...
Patterico wonders about the subtleties of a Judge Amy Barrett on the Supreme Court:
Would a Justice Amy Barrett Recuse Herself in Abortion Cases?
Well, definitely maybe. His gist - in a 1998 article (back in her law professor days) she argued that a trial judge (surely) or an appeals judge (maybe) should not participate in death penalty cases because that is contrary to Catholic teaching.
Briefly, then, since abortion is also contrary to Catholic teaching, will a judge be allowed to participate in the legal element of the machinery of death? Or might she choose to recuse herself from abortion-related cases?
Patterico doesn't know and neither do I but...
My impression of her 1998 article is this: Imagine a state legislature has passed and the governor signed a death penalty bill which passes state and Federal constitutional muster. As a judge she is sworn to uphold the law, including laws with which she may not agree. Given the magnitude of the death penalty issue, a judge who can not in good conscience enforce a death penalty should recuse herself from death penalty cases. As to appeals, well, that is trickier, as she explained.
Where she might come out, however, is here: If a death penalty case is being appealed on Constitutional Eighth Amendment 'cruel and unusual' grounds she might well hear it - if, for example, she thinks executing fifteen year olds is wrong for religious reasons, well, she will have plenty of company with people who reached the same place from other directions.
But if, for example, a drug cartel hitman was appealing his death penalty case on the basis of illegally obtained evidence, it would not be appropriate for a judge to rule that, well, hmm, the search that obtained the evidence was legal but she is throwing it out anyway to save the guy's life. That is not judging. Recusal from the appeal would have been the better course.
As to abortion, however, even California is unlikely to pass a constitutionally valid law obliging people to have abortions. As a Supreme Court justice Ms. Barrett will rarely (if ever) expected to enforce constitutionally valid abortion laws with which she personally disagrees; she will be opining on whether the laws are, in fact, constitutionally valid.
Her oath to uphold and enforce the law certainly does not oblige her to enforce every law on the books and every past court precedent - courts strike down laws and overturn precedents all the time.
Folks who want to say she should recuse herself from abortion cases because she has, in effect, pre-judged them are making a different argument, and a very awkward one. The idea that a thoughtful, secular ethical answer to a moral question carries more weight than one derived from religious principles leads into the swamp of legislating religion into law versus imposing religious tests (really, non-religious tests) on office-holders. This is how we get classic Kerry-isms (just to pick on him, but a million Democrats have said this) along the lines of "I personally believe X is wrong but I would never let my beliefs influence my legislating". Ever? Why the hell not, one might wonder?
It's murky. I might have believed eating meat on Friday is wrong (dating myself there) but I don't think any Catholic legislator lay awake nights trying to ban meat consumption nationwide on Fridays. On the other hand, the 1850's abolitionists were famously religious and I doubt even Johnny Waffles would have tried to explain to them that because of their religious convictions their anti-slavery views could not be enacted into legislation. Oh, who knows - what was the state of polling back then?
I SHOULD ADD: I liked the way George Bush 43 bobbed and weaved on this - you have to change people's hearts before you change the law. That said, if 80% of the good people of the great state of [insert one of about twenty states here] want to ban abortion in their state, how many more hearts do you have to change?
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