;)
The Commentariat -- August 29, 2019
Late Morning Update:
Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Former FBI Director James B. Comey violated FBI policies in how he handled memos that detailed his controversial interactions with President Trump, the Justice Department inspector general found in a report released Thursday, both in engineering their release to the press and storing them at his home without telling the FBI. The inspector general found that the memos -- which described, among other things, how Trump had pressed Comey for loyalty and asked him about letting go an investigation into ... Michael Flynn -- were official records, and as such, Comey's treatment of them broke the rules.... On Twitter, Comey noted that the inspector general found 'no evidence' that he or his attorneys released any classified information to the media. '"I don't need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a "sorry we lied about you" would be nice.... And to all those who've spent two years talking about me "going to jail" or being a "liar and a leaker" -- ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president.'" ...
... David Shortell, et al., of CNN: "Former FBI Director James Comey violated agency policies when he retained and leaked a set of memos he took documenting meetings with President Donald Trump early in 2017, the Justice Department's inspector general said in a report released Thursday. Comey set a 'dangerous example' for FBI employees in an attempt to 'achieve a personally desired outcome,' the report states. However, the IG found 'no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.'... The inspector general's office referred the findings of its report to the Justice Department for potential prosecution earlier this summer. Prosecutors declined to bring a case, the report says." ...
... Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "President Trump and his allies are sure to use the report's conclusions to attack Mr. Comey.... The report is the latest chapter in the story of Mr. Comey, who was castigated last year as part of a broader inspector general's investigation that examined his handling of the Hillary Clinton email inquiry." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Is the DOJ really going to prosecute Andy McCabe after letting Sanctimonious Jim off the hook?
Just Joking. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: "As The Post's Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey report, Trump has told his subordinates to seize private land and disregard environmental rules as they build a border wall, offering to pardon them for breaking the law. The White House response? Trump is joking. Hahahahahahaha. My sides are totally splitting. That was almost as funny as the time when ... Trump told Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton's emails. 'He was joking,' the White House said.... The Russians didn't get the joke; they began acting on Trump's request within hours, special counsel Robert Mueller found.... [Trump] and his aides have recast a series of ominous statements as jokes that the rest of us just didn't get[.]" Milbank rolls out a pretty long list.
~~~~~~~~~~
"The Age of Trump." There has never been a time in the history of our Country that the Media was so Fraudulent, Fake, or Corrupt! When the 'Age of Trump' is looked back on many years from now, I only hope that a big part of my legacy will be the exposing of massive dishonesty in the Fake News! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet last night ...
... Trump Threatens to Fire Trump Teevee. Brian Stelter of CNN: "President Trump took his complaints about Fox News, his biggest bastion of support on television, to a new level on Wednesday, claiming that the network 'isn't working for us anymore.' His tweets made explicit Trump's long-held belief that Fox belongs to him and his supporters. Despite daily cheerleading from [Fox program hosts]..., Trump suggests that the network is not sufficiently loyal to him. "We have to start looking for a new News Outlet,' he tweeted on Wednesday, inadvertently lending credence to critics' claims that Fox is akin to state-run TV.In the past Trump has promoted a much smaller conservative channel, OANN, which has positioned itself as a friendlier network to Trump." (Also linked yesterday.)...
... Paul Farhi & John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Trump's morning fusillade followed Fox anchor Sandra Smith's interview of Xochitl Hinojosa, the communications director for the Democratic National Committee, in which she discussed next month's Democratic presidential debate, among other things.... There are two potential interpretations of Trump's comment that 'Fox isn't working for us anymore.' One is that the president is generally disdainful of the network; the other suggests Trump believes Fox is an arm of his administration and reelection campaign." ...
... Justin Baragona of the Daily Beast: "Several Fox News personalities pushed back Wednesday against ... Donald Trump after he escalated his public attacks on the right-leaning outlet for its occasional anti-Trump voices.... Almost immediately after the president's tweets, Fox News senior political analyst and former news anchor Brit Hume sounded off: 'Fox News isn't supposed to work for you,' he wrote.... [Contributor Guy] Benson also said that Trump was 'working the refs,' agreeing with Axios' Sara Fischer that Trump was playing to a 'fringe culture' of rabid supporters whom the president hopes would help push Fox News to intensify its already largely pro-Trump coverage."
Mrs. McCrabbie: Donald Trump claimed in a tweet Wednesday that he is "the best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico!" This is an example of what I meant the other day (last August 26 comment), when I wrote:
Having lost his mastery of the "best words," [Trump] is now robbing the English language of its substance.... Even when he makes a proper sentence, the words -- because they are most apt to form lies -- are just sounds an English-speaking person makes. Thus you get headlines like this one in [Monday's] WashPo: "After Trump claims first lady has 'gotten to know' Kim Jong Un, White House clarifies they've never met."
He is best at inverting word meanings: this, a climate denier becomes an "environmentalist"; "fake news" turns out to be, by the common understanding of the term, "real news." This is akin to his projections: "Crooked Hillary" is a way of deflecting the reality of "Crooked Donald"; "Sleepy Joe" is a nod to Trump's hatred of & failure to perform the work a real president does....
We know Trump is in general a destructive person, a bull in every China shop he enters. And that is true of his destruction of the Meaning of Anything & Everything. This is pathological nihilism of the first order.
John Koblin of the New York Times: "The MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell admitted an 'error in judgment' on Wednesday for reporting on his show the night before that President Trump had made a financial arrangement with so-called Russian oligarchs. Mr. O'Donnell said the reporting, which he had attributed to a single source on his 10 p.m. Tuesday program, 'didn't go through our rigorous verification and standards process.' 'I shouldn't have reported it, and I was wrong to discuss it on the air,' he said. Hours earlier, Mr. Trump's attorney Charles J. Harder had sent a letter to NBC demanding that the network and its parent company 'immediately and prominently retract, correct and apologize for the aforementioned false and defamatory statements.'" Thanks to Ken W. for the link. CNN's story is here. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: O'Donnell also retracted his Tuesday report at the top of his Wednesday show. We may find it ironic that Trump himself, nearly daily, publishes demonstrably "false and defamatory" official U.S. government statements (we might call them "tweets"), statements which should meet a higher standard than teevee talk-show host remarks. See also Gloria's comment in today's thread.
Caitlin Emma & Connor O'Brien of Politico: "The Trump administration is slow-walking $250 million in military assistance to Ukraine, annoying lawmakers and advocates who argue the funding is critical to keeping Russia at bay.... Donald Trump asked his national security team to review the funding program, known as the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, in order to ensure the money is being used in the best interest of the United States, a senior administration official told Politico on Wednesday.... The explanation isn't sitting well with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.... The delays come amid questions over Trump's approach to Russia, after a weekend in which the president repeatedly seemed to downplay Moscow's military intervention in Ukraine and pushed for Russia to be reinstated into the Group of Seven...."
John Wagner & Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "Former defense secretary Jim Mattis, who resigned last year after clashing with President Trump, says in a new book excerpt that 'I did as well as I could for as long as I could' and warns of the dangers of a leader who is not committed to working with allies. Mattis, who announced his resignation in December after Trump shocked American allies and overruled his advisers by announcing a withdrawal from Syria, writes in his book that he decided to depart 'when my concrete solutions and strategic advice, especially keeping faith with our allies, no longer resonated.'... In his book excerpt, published Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal, Mattis writes about the need for leaders to appreciate the value of allies without explicitly mentioning Trump...." The WashPo story is republished in Stars & Stripes. (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic characterizes Mattis's time working for Donald Trump: "... aides and friends say he found the president to be of limited cognitive ability, and of generally dubious character." Goldberg interviewed Mattis, but Mattis adheres to "the French concept of devoir de réserve ... 'The duty of silence. If you leave an administration, you owe some silence. When you leave an administration over clear policy differences, you need to give the people who are still there as much opportunity as possible to defend the country.... 'I had no choice but to leave,' he told me. 'That's why [my resignation] letter is in the book. I want people to understand why I couldn't stay. I've been informed by four decades of experience, and I just couldn't connect the dots anymore.'"
Cruelty Is the Essence of the Scheme (Apologies to Robert Frost)
Seung Min Kim & Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "Through his pardons of political allies, conservative defenders and others convicted of federal crimes, President Trump throughout his term has sent indirect signals of his willingness to help those close to him escape punishment.... Several of the 15 pardons that Trump has issued during his presidency -- a power that is nearly unchecked and that Trump has relished -- have carried with them an overtly political tone. And now, the president has entwined that message with his chief campaign promise -- by privately assuring aides that he would pardon them of any potential illegality as the administration rushes to build his vaunted border wall before he returns to the ballot next November. The notion has alarmed congressional Democrats, who had been investigating potential obstruction of justice on Trump's part.... The wall discussions are not the first time that Trump has reportedly promised a pardon to a subordinate for doing something potentially illegal...." ...
... CNN: "... Donald Trump told officials he will pardon them should they break any laws in attempting to finish construction on the wall at the US-Mexico border, initially reported by The Washington Post, citing current and former officials involved with the project." This is a video report. ...
... Paul LeBlanc of CNN: "... Donald Trump on Wednesday said he is 'seriously' considering ending US birthright citizenship despite the fact that such a move would face immediate legal challenge and is at odds with Supreme Court precedent. 'We're looking at that very seriously, birthright citizenship,' Trump told reporters outside the White House, echoing his administration's previous vow to unilaterally end the process by which babies born in the country automatically become citizens." ...
... Kicking out the Sick Kids, Ctd. Julia Ainsley of NBC News: "Without making the policy change public, [U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services], and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, has quietly rejected all requests for deferred [deportation] action, except those made by certain military members and veterans. In addition, deferred action for immigrants who arrived as children, known as 'Dreamers' under the DACA program, is protected because of ongoing litigation. WBUR-FM, Boston's National Public Radio station, was first to report that USCIS has denied medical deferred action requests, reserved for immigrants with health conditions whose lives would be endangered if they were deported. USCIS told NBC News the policy of denying deferred action now applies not only to medical cases but more generally to all deferred action requests outside of the military and DACA. Instead, applicants must apply to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.... An ICE official speaking on the condition of anonymity said ICE was blindsided by USCIS's decision to refer all immigrants applying for deferred action to them. ICE currently has no plans in place to review deferred action applications. 'ICE does not have a program for this nor do we plan to,' the official said." ...
... Kicking out Service Members' Kids. Haley Britzky of Task & Purpose: "Some children born to U.S. service members and government employees overseas will no longer be automatically considered citizens of the United States, according to policy alert issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Wednesday. Previously, all children born to U.S. citizen parents were considered to be 'residing in the United States,' and therefore would be automatically granted citizenship under Immigration and Nationality Act 320. Now, children born to U.S. service members and government employees who are not yet themselves U.S. citizens, while abroad, will not be considered as residing in the U.S., changing the way that they potentially receive citizenship. Children who are not U.S. citizens and are adopted by U.S. service members while living abroad will also no longer receive automatic citizenship by living with the U.S. citizen adopted parents. The change was first reported by San Francisco Chronicle reporter Tal Kopan." ...
... Especially if They're Smart, Educated Kids. Tara Copp of McClatchy DC: "A federal appellate court will hear the case of a Kansas military family fighting the deportation of their adopted daughter next month.... Retired Army Lt. Col. Patrick Schreiber was deployed to Afghanistan in 2013 when a critical deadline passed for his now-adopted daughter Hyebin to be able to apply for U.S. citizenship. After he returned from his year long-deployment, Schreiber and wife Soo Jin completed their formal adoption of Hyebin. But she had just turned 17 and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services age limit for a foreign-born adopted child to become a naturalized U.S. citizen is 16.... Hyebin ... will have to leave the U.S. after she graduates ... this December from the University of Kansas with a degree in chemical engineering. Schreiber, who served in the military for 27 years, met his wife in Korea in the 1990s while he was deployed there. They took in Hyebin, who is Soo Jin's niece, as their own daughter when she was 15." --s ...
... Mrs. McC: And the upside to kicking a well-educated, highly-employable American out of the country??? ...
... Nick Martin of the New Republic: "Trump's anti-immigration policies were introduced with talk of 'rapists' and 'murderers,' but that was just a pretext to come after the rest." Martin summarizes ICE's cancelling the student visa of Ismail Ajjawi, who was awarded a scholarship to Harvard. "... there exists a sense of dark irony and disconnect between Trump's core message of 'They're not sending their best' and Ajjawi's story."
Benjamin Wittes of LawFare: "You should ... expect charges against [Andrew] McCabe to be forthcoming any day.... Why is that shocking? Because as best as I can tell, the facts available on the public record simply don't support such charges. The only visible factor militating in favor of the Justice Department charging McCabe, in fact, is that the department has been on the receiving end of a sustained campaign by President Trump demanding McCabe's scalp.... My point here is thus not to suggest that McCabe did nothing wrong. But criminal charges? At least based on what's in the inspector general's report, this is very far from a criminal case.... Trump has been on a long-term and very public campaign of attacks on McCabe.... Just look here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here..." --s
Aaron Rupar of Vox: "[T]he DOJ's position is that [Bill] Barr is essentially being forced to have his holiday party at Trump International because no other space is available in the city.... Barr -- who also served as attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration -- has pretended to be painfully ignorant about Trump's conflicts of interest. It's worth recalling that at his confirmation hearing in January he pretended to be unaware of what the 'emoluments clause' even is.... But ... Barr has apparently learned about emoluments in the meantime, because when he's not spending money at the Trump Hotel, he's defending the president's conflicts of interest in federal court[.]" --s
** Lisa Friedman of the New York Times: "The Trump administration is set to announce on Thursday that it intends to sharply curtail the regulation of methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change, according to an industry official with knowledge of the plan. The Environmental Protection Agency, in a proposed rule, will aim to eliminate federal government requirements that the oil and gas industry put in place technology to inspect for and repair methane leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities. The proposed rollback is particularly notable because major oil and gas companies have, in fact, opposed it, just as some other industries have opposed the Trump administration's other major moves to dismantle climate change and other environmental rules put in place by President Barack Obama.... The new rule must go through a period of public comment and review...." Mrs. McC: I can't figure out why anyone -- well, maybe Le Pétomane -- would think releasing methane into the air was a good idea.
Julian Barnes of the New York Times: "A secret cyberattack against Iran in June wiped out a critical database used by Iran's paramilitary arm to plot attacks against oil tankers and degraded Tehran's ability to covertly target shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf, at least temporarily, according to senior American officials.... The June 20 strike was a critical attack..., officials said, and it went forward even after President Trump called off a retaliatory airstrike that day after Iran shot down an American drone." Business Insider has a summary of the NYT report here.
Presidential Race 2020
Steven Shepard of Politico: "The next televised showdown for the Democratic presidential candidates will shrink to one debate stage after only 10 of the hopefuls met the polling and fundraising criteria set by the Democratic National Committee.... The debate on Sept. 12 will mark the first time that all of the top candidates will debate together.... The 10 candidates who will be on the debate stage in Houston ... are : [former Vice President Joe] Biden (37 percent), Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont (21 percent), [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren (20 percent), [Sen. Kamala] Harris (17 percent), South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (7 percent), Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey (3 percent), Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota (3 percent), entrepreneur Andrew Yang (3 percent), former HUD Secretary Julián Castro (3 percent) and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas (3 percent)."
Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who presented herself in the presidential race as a champion of women and families, said Wednesday that she was withdrawing from the Democratic primary after failing to qualify for a third debate next month -- a development she described as fatal to her candidacy. Ms. Gillibrand said in an interview that she would endorse another candidate in the primary but had not yet picked a favorite." Here's Gillibrand's tweet announcing the end of her candidacy. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) The Washington Post story is here. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Naturally, Trump found it necessary to belittle Gillibrand.
Quint Forgey of Politico: "Two new polls show Joe Biden more than a dozen points ahead of his nearest rivals in the 2020 Democratic primary -- further fortifying the former vice president's front-runner status after an apparent outlier survey put his campaign on the defensive earlier this week.... A Monmouth University poll released Monday ... showed Biden, Sanders and Warren locked in a virtual three-way tie.... Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth poll, acknowledged in a statement on Wednesday that '... the Monmouth University Poll published Monday is an outlier.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Tax Axelrod of the Hill: "President Trump trails all five Democrats who have consistently ranked in top spots in surveys of the 2020 Democratic presidential race, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. The newest survey shows Trump falling behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and >Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), each by double digits." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Senate Race 2020. Emily Cochrane of the New York Times: "Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, announced on Wednesday that he will resign from his seat at the end of the year, citing health reasons for the decision.... He currently chairs both the Senate Select Committee on Ethics and the Veterans' Affairs Committee. His retirement sets the stage for two potentially competitive Senate races in Georgia, a state that Democrats have increasingly targeted, during a presidential election year. Mr. Isakson's colleague, Senator David Perdue, is also a Republican and up for re-election.... [Gov. Brian] Kemp [R] is expected to appoint Mr. Isakson's replacement.... A party official said that the person appointed to Mr. Isakson's seat will have to compete in a primary ahead of a special election in 2020, meaning that both Georgia Senate seats will be on the same ballot." The NPR story is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Robert Frank of CNBC: "The rich have cut their spending on everything from homes to jewelry, sparking fears of a trickle-down recession that starts at the top.... [T]he weakest segment of the American economy right now is the very top. While the middle class and broader consumer sections continue to spend, economists say the sudden pullback among the wealthy could cascade down to the rest of the economy and create a further drag on growth. Luxury real estate is having its worst year since the financial crisis, with pricey markets like Manhattan seeing six straight quarters of sales declines." --s
Anne Barnard of the New York Times: "... after sailing across the Atlantic on an emissions-free yacht, Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, has disembarked in Lower Manhattan ahead of her speech next month at the United Nations Climate Action Summit. After a 15-day sail that was obsessively tracked by European news media, cheered by fellow climate activists, mocked by critics and rocked by rough waves off Nova Scotia, Greta and the boat's crew went through customs on Wednesday morning while anchored off Coney Island, Brooklyn." The NPR story is here. Thanks to unwashed for the lead. Mrs. McC: Does Greta have a visa? How did she get one? Isn't she a subversive? Why is she "invading our country"? Where was ICE when Greta "unsteadily" set foot on U.S. soil? Was she drunk? As unwashed suggested, Oh, Sweden. Blond pigtails.
Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "Two cameras that malfunctioned outside the jail cell where financier Jeffrey Epstein died as he awaited trial on sex-trafficking charges have been sent to an FBI crime lab for examination, a law enforcement source told Reuters.... The cameras were sent to Quantico, Virginia, site of a major FBI crime lab where agents and forensic scientists analyze evidence.... Epstein's lawyers Reid Weingarten and Martin Weinberg told U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in Manhattan on Tuesday they had doubts about the New York City chief medical examiner's conclusion that their client killed himself. The two cameras were within view of the Manhattan jail cell where he was found dead on Aug. 10."
Splinter: "A federal judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of Splinter, the site's managing editor, Katherine Krueger, and the site's parent company, Gizmodo Media Group, in a $100 million defamation lawsuit brought by Jason Miller, a former top spokesman for the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign. Miller was appointed as Trump's incoming White House communications director in December 2016 but stepped down from the role after it was reported that he had carried out an extramarital affair with another Trump campaign staffer, A.J. Delgado (who subsequently had Miller's child). He sued Splinter over the September 2018 publication of an article reporting a series of allegations laid out against him in a supplemental filing made by Delgado as part of a protracted, acrimonious child custody case." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I don't suppose Jason appreciates the irony of a would-be communications director -- that is, someone who is supposed to work with a free press -- suing the free press. I get that Jason didn't want his dirty laundry hung out on the line -- because the laundry was ever-so dingy -- but a top communications operative should certainly be aware that the press may print true things -- true not necessarily in the underlying facts, but true in that Jason's wife really did present those allegations. It's elementary.
Lee Fang of The Intercept: "Many obituaries published in recent days examine [David] Koch history of polluting the environment and political system, how the donor network he helped lead mobilized opposition to addressing climate change, transformed our election laws to allow unlimited secret spending by the very rich, and systematically fought any regulation, labor reform, or tax viewed as a threat to the corporate power elite. Yet Koch's most visible accomplishment is the current occupant of the White House -- a legacy largely unrecognized, and one that goes well beyond any other single triumph in his life.... [I]n his scorched-earth quest for unparalleled influence, Koch, perhaps unwittingly, laid the path for Trump." --s
Helen Davidson of the Guardian: "The US government knew for months that Indonesia's military was supporting and arming militias in East Timor in the lead-up to the 1999 independence referendum but continued to push for stronger military ties, declassified documents have revealed.... [T]he documents illustrated a split between the US state department concerned with the [Indonesian Army]-backed militia violence and the Pentagon striving to preserve a military relationship in the face of widespread opposition." --s
Jackie's "Colored Dressmaker." Gillian Brockell of the Washington Post: "The 1953 wedding of Jacqueline Bouvier and then-Sen. John F. Kennedy was so perfect it is still being talked about more than 65 years later.... But for Ann Lowe, who designed the bridal gown, it was a nightmare. First, the wedding dress was destroyed 10 days before the ceremony. Then the 24-year-old bride, who did not really like the gown in the first place, snubbed her. Asked who made the dress, a viral tweet remembered this week, Jackie simply responded 'a colored dressmaker.'... Lowe was essentially written out of what would have been a career-making gown for anyone else. According to [a later report], only The Washington Post's Nina Hyde reported who the designer was.... Despite her brilliance and reputation, Lowe was frequently taken advantage of by her clientele, who talked her prices down to a fraction of what they were worth. By the mid-1960s, she was tens of thousands of dollars in debt and in trouble with the IRS. Then, an 'anonymous friend' paid her back taxes, cutting her debts in half. Lowe suspected the anonymous friend was Jackie."
Beyond the Beltway
Georgia Election 2018. A One-in-a-Million Chance. Mark Niesse of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "To find a clue about what might have gone wrong with Georgia's election last fall, look no further than voting machine No. 3 at the Winterville Train Depot outside Athens. On machine No. 3, Republicans won every race. On each of the other six machines in that precinct, Democrats won every race. The odds of an anomaly that large are less than 1 in 1 million, according to a statistician's analysis in court documents. The strange results would disappear if votes for Democratic and Republican candidates were flipped on machine No. 3. It just so happens that this occurred in Republican Brian Kemp's home precinct...." Mrs. McC: Kemp was then Georgia's secretary of state & was "overseeing" the gubernatorial election in which he was running. Oh, wow, he won! Read on for the nitty-gritty, and implications. ...
... Kate Brumback of the AP (August 15): "U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, who is "overseeing a challenge to Georgia's outdated voting system" prohibited "the state from using its antiquated paperless touchscreen machines and election management system beyond this year. She also said the state must be ready to use hand-marked paper ballots if its new system isn't in place for the March 24 presidential primary election." ...
... Mississippi. Tal Axelrod of the Hill: "State officials have confirmed at least three reports of voting machines in two counties changing voters' picks in Mississippi's GOP gubernatorial primary runoff. Former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves are currently in a runoff for the Republican nomination in the governor's race to see who will take on Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood in the November general election. Reeves led Waller in the Aug. 6 balloting by a 49-33 margin, though the race went to a runoff after no candidate hit 50 percent. The issues emerged Tuesday morning, with one Facebook user posting a video showing a touch-screen voting machine changing their selection from Waller to Reeves." ...
Way Beyond
U.K. Aamna Mohdin, et al., of the Guardian: "Within hours of Boris Johnson's decision to suspend parliament, impromptu protests were being held in major city centres across the country, including in front of the Palace of Westminster in central London.... The demonstrators described the move to suspend parliament as a coup and called for Johnson to resign. At one point, the traffic at Downing Street was at a standstill as protesters chanted 'save our democracy, stop the coup' and sang 'No one voted for Boris'." ...
... Alexander Smith of NBC News: Britain's Queen Elizabeth approved PM Boris Johnson's request "to close Parliament from early September until mid-October.... The speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, who was elected as a Conservative before taking up the impartial role, said such a move would be a 'constitutional outrage.'... On the opposition benches, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said in a statement that he was 'appalled at the recklessness' of the move. 'This is an outrage and a threat to our democracy,' he added." Johnson's objective is "to make it harder for lawmakers to thwart the prime minister's Brexit plans before Oct. 31, the date the U.K. is scheduled to leave the European Union." Related stories linked below. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
News Lede
NBC News: "Hurricane Dorian swept by Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands on Wednesday, on track for what could be landfall as a Category 3 storm in Florida over the weekend. An 80-year-old man died in Puerto Rico when he fell from a ladder while preparing his home for the storm, police said. Few casualties and little confirmed damage were reported in the Caribbean as Dorian, which became a hurricane Wednesday afternoon, skirted Puerto Rico." The linked page has a live storm tracker.
Share Article
Reader Comments (7)
One has to take a deep breath, a scratch on the head and sit down in order to fathom another cockamamie maneuver by this administration: It's ok for more methane to pollute our air (getting rid of another Obama regulation––it's as though scraping anything Obama is like completely erasing him) while shoving out that "well educated, highly employable American out of the country." (see story above) If Le Pétomane were with us today he'd fit in just fine with the other FART that gasses us every day of the week.
People on the Teevee political programs that give us their dish of dimes appear to be in unison that Fatty is floundering fast and his latest––"break the law, don't worry, I'll pardon you" business is––wait for it––drum roll please–-A CRIME! and I betcha–-we'll let that go just like all the others. We have a basket full of impeachables but we just keep filling it up––it's like hoping the hurricane goes off course.
Just for once, broke donnie is correct. Part of his “legacy” will be the exposure of the massive dishonesty and bias in the media. Many of us have seen it for years, but now it is unequivocally laid bare.
O’Donnell shouldn’t retreat, but challenge broke donnie to disprove his (carefully framed) allegations, from a trusted source, many people are saying, where there’s smoke, there’s global firestorms. Release the documents, prove the Russians don’t own you, release your taxes, your loan details, what are you afraid of, broke donnie? Keep his Russian corruption in the news, and hammer it every time he spruiks for his boss, Putin.
Was thinking of Dan Rather's demise and how that incident differed from O'Donnell's ostensible journalistic overreach two days ago.
The differences? I can think of a few. I'm sure there are more.
Maybe he shouldn't have rushed to report what he thought might turn out to be big news (I don't think I would have), but O'Donnell did preface everything he said by repeatedly saying the report was single-sourced and unconfirmed. It was more in the woudn't it be wonderful vein, and as I said yesterday I was sure with him on that.
I don't remember Rather emphasizing the speculative nature of his reporting. What tripped him up, as he later said, the document on which he relied was not "properly vetted." I never heard if it was definitely fake or if fake anything about its origins.
Nonetheless the story about Bush II's non-service service during the Vietnam War was essentially true. We don't yet know that about O'Donnell's report, and if the Pretender has his way, we never will.
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/12/14/memo-cbs-george-w-bush-dan-rather-got-mostly-right
Bush II, despite all his flaws, was a more plausible president than is the Pretender. Despised by many maybe, but not to the degree the current occupant of the White House is. That difference will lead to different treatment of the two men both in the present, should another Deutsche Bank shoe drop and in the future.
When Rather reported on the Bush II string-pulling, the country was on a "war" footing, so was perhaps more prone to be defensive of its leader.
The only wars the Pretender is engaged in are against traditional allies, the planet and brown people--and none of those conflicts plays as well as going after those who perpetrated 9/11.
Even if Bush II got the wrong country, the nation was willing to give him points for trying.
Just two months ago, Magnolia Pictures picked up distribution rights for the documentary Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins. They've wasted no time in rolling it out to theaters. Tomorrow it debuts, on Molly’s 75th birthday, in select theaters across the country after receiving rave reviews from critics (92% “Fresh” at Rotten Tomatoes) and packed crowds on the film festival circuit.
Daily Kos has a trailer
The Need for Speed
Ken’s reminder of the unfortunate end to Dan Rather’s career, coupled with Lawrence O’Donnell’s backtracking on a possible huge piece of evidence related to Trump’s treason, points up one of the enormous downsides of the digital age and of our increasing insistence on immediate access to information no matter how poorly communicated, questionable, purely speculative, or obviously untruthful.
I am no Luddite, but I can embrace all that technology has given us (this forum, for instance, and access to news from around the world at the click of a mouse) without feeling more than a bit rueful about the need for speed that has helped schemers and liars like Trump use the sometimes sketchy approach taken by some journalists and their venues to question everything the media throws out there, even articles that are exhaustively researched and vetted, well written, and professionally edited.
Now speeding breaking news into the papers (when the papers were the dominant courier of goings-on in the country and around the world) has always been a field littered with landmines. In the wake of the Titanic sinking, many papers reported that there was no loss of life. Some articles even went so far as to invent descriptions of passengers calmly boarding lifeboats and sailing away peacefully, strumming on the old banjo. A Louisiana newspaper in 1862 broke the breathless news that Washington had been overrun by Confederates. Well, eventually it was overrun by confederates, but not in 1862. The New York Times, in 1956, reported the death of Fidel Castro, which was probably news to that guy since he was still alive 60 years later. Papers reported that John Kerry picked Dick Gephardt as his running mate, which likely would have been better than his eventual choice, John Edwards. Then there’s “Dewey Defeats Truman”.
But for the most part, good, professional reporters and editors were careful about their stories. Read (or watch) “All the President’s Men” again to see how frustrated Bernstein and Woodward were with editor Ben Bradlee’s insistence on multiple sources and thorough corroboration. Had the Post rushed that story (a killer tale by any measure) into print with just a single loose end, Nixon and his henchmen would have torn it apart and demanded that the public question everything in it. And they would have. And that would have been It for Watergate.
Or Boston Globe editor Walter Robinson demanding that his team of reporters investigating the powerful Archdiocese of Boston in an enormous sex abuse scandal provide far more than due diligence before going live with accusations against the Church. Had they been just a little bit sloppy, the whole story could have been questioned. It’s like a witness on the stand whose story is essentially true, but after getting caught in a small exaggeration, their testimony becomes tainted and a scumbag criminal could possibly walk. But they didn’t get caught up. They took their time and did it right.
That was then.
The truly sad thing about the Rather story is that it was true. At least the gist of it. Bush was a deserter. End of story. But because Rather went off half-cocked, it gave the burgeoning right-wing smear machine ample room to question everything (because of a single letter on a keyboard, which proved in the end to be a cock and bull story itself, but too late to do any good). The rush to get it out there did in Rather and bolstered the Decider, his lies and his lying cabal. And his war is still going on almost 20 years later.
We’ll never go back to days of scrupulously professional editors. Hell, reading many reports, it’s pretty clear that if any editorial eyes were cast upon copy before someone hit “send”, it was no more than a blink, with a gigantic mote of dust occluding the eyeball. And forget copy editing (which must truly irk real copy editors, at least one of which is among our number out here). Stuff goes online (or into print!) with egregious typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors of such a bestial nature as to knock unconscious, with a single blow, an entire phalanx of high school English teachers.
But aside from the technical aspects of the writing (which also suffers from the need for speed—I know; too often I’ve hit send only to realize upon a quick reread that there’s been some ridiculous abuse of the rules of subject-verb agreement or some other elementary bit of grammatical business), is the damage done by (even slightly) inaccurate reporting that hasn’t covered all the bases, or indulged in unsupported conjecture or overly hyperbolic ruminations.
One of the best bits of writing advice I ever received came from a teaching assistant (who went on to found a writing workshop at a fairly prestigious university) in a Shakespeare survey course. The advice was twofold. First, don’t wait until the last minute to write a paper (not always possible in college--you guys remember--ergo the occasional 4am disaster), and after you finish, stick it in the desk drawer for a couple of days. If it works when you take it out and read it again, you’re good. If you read it and your first thought is “What the hell is going on here?” then it’s time for some serious editing. Those turned out to be my best papers.
This, of course, is not always possible, especially in today’s instant add-a-cup-of-boiling-water-and-it's-journalism world.
But it’s too bad, ain’t it? And it’s even worse if a criminal and traitor like Trump gets to skate on what could (should) be the key to unlocking his entire dirty treasure chest of secrets.
Okay, semi-rant over. I gotta speed along.
I didn't write the FBI policies that Comey violated but it would seem to me that policies about disseminating or storing information would distinguish between treating such information in a manner solely to enhance or protect one's personal reputation or using it in a way to best serve the country.
Yes, the Pretender was right. It was always a question of loyalty. Comey's behavior, while self-serving, intentionally or not demonstrated a much larger loyalty: loyalty to the nation.
And rules that don't make that distinction are dumb, and for in the business of serving the people are made to be broken.
Diaper Donnie may have something else to shit his pants over soon. That being Hurricane Dorian.
According to the European Model forecast on Windy.com it should hit Florida late Monday. Guess where? Marred-a-Lago!
It'll probably just be another reason for him to divert more money from FEMA directly into his pocket. I wonder if he'll hereby order the Army Corps of Engineers to perform the reconstruction, for free, of course.