;)
The Commentariat -- November 10, 2017
Afternoon Update:
Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Mike Flynn and his sons alleged plot to kidnap a Muslim cleric living in the U.S. and hand him over to Turkey in exchange for millions of dollars. The former national security adviser to ... Donald Trump and his son, Mike Flynn Jr., would have been paid up to $15 million for delivering Fethullah Gulen to the Turkish government, according to sources familiar with the investigation who spoke to the Wall Street Journal." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: So congratulations, folks! You are residents of a country in which the top national security advisor to the president is being investigated for kidnapping & rendition to a harsh foreign government. Unless, that is, your DACA renewal app was lost in the mail. In which case, you'll have to leave. ...
... How Cruel Is the Trump Administration? Liz Robbins of the New York Times: "Dozens of young immigrants mailed [DACA] renewal forms weeks before they were due. But their paperwork was delayed in the mail and [their applications were] denied for being late.... On Thursday, in a rare admission from a federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service took the blame..... But the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency said nothing more could be done; the decisions were final. Because DACA is an executive order, signed by President Barack Obama in 2012, and not a statute, applicants cannot appeal the decision.... Still, immigrants and their advocates viewed the agency's unwillingness to revisit their applications as harsh and unfair.... On Sept. 5, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced after months of speculation that the Trump administration was canceling the program. Recipients were allowed to keep their permits until they expired at the end of the current two-year term. The administration also offered a brief renewal window for recipients whose permits were expiring before March 5, which set off a scramble across the country from legal service providers to assist applicants."
Ben Kamisar of the Hill: "Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has requested to be removed from Alabama GOP Senate nominee Roy Moore's fundraising pitches after a Thursday investigative report from the Washington Post detailed accusations of inappropriate sexual conduct between a 32-year-old Moore and a minor.... The fundraising pitch attempted to discredit the allegations and included pictures of Lee, as well as Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.)." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: That's funny, because back when Lee already knew all the stuff that Alex Shephard mentions in the post linked below, Lee wrote, "Judge Moore's tested reputation of integrity is exactly what we need in Washington, D.C., in order to pass conservative legislation and protect the liberty of all Americans." So, um, kicking Muslims out of Congress would be "conservative legislation"; dating girls half your age is creepy? Making homosexuality illegal is "protecting the liberty of all Americans," but molesting a 14-year-old is over the line? Why don't you tell us where your line is, Mike? ...
... Here's a lesson from Steve M. that we all know by heart: "Don't believe Republicans when they sound reasonable. They inevitably defer to those on their side who aren't. That's how we got our president." ...
... Luckily, Some Alabama Lawmakers Are Sensitive & Sensible. Brad Reed of the Raw Story: "Republican Alabama State Representative Ed Henry said on Friday that he wanted someone to bring charges against the women who accused GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore of making sexual advances on them when they were teenagers.... 'If they believe this man is predatory, they are guilty of allowing him to exist for 40 years,' Henry fumed. 'I think someone should prosecute and go after them. You can't be a victim 40 years later, in my opinion.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Maybe we should mention here that Anthony Weiner resigned from Congress, under pressure from Democrats -- including Nancy Pelosi & Barack Obama -- and he is now in jail, serving time for doing virtually what Roy Moore (allegedly) did person-to-person.
*****
Andrew Restuccia & Michael Tatarski of Politico: "... Donald Trump Friday delivered a broadside against unfair trade practices, warning of a coming crackdown from the United States on 'violations, cheating or economic aggression.' But in a bid to avoid souring his blossoming relationship with China and other nations in the region, he stopped short of placing the blame for everything from product dumping to currency manipulation and predatory industrial policies on other countries. 'The current trade imbalance is not acceptable. I do not blame China or any other country -- of which there are many -- for taking advantage of the United States on trade,' Trump said during a speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit [in Da Nang, Vietnam]. I wish previous administrations in my country saw what was happening and did something about it. They did not, but I will.'... During his speech, Trump roundly rejected multilateral trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he withdrew from on his third day in office."
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: All hat, no cattle. So far, all Trump has "done" is to undo Obama's work on trade negotiations with Asia-Pacific countries. While many groups found fault with the TPP, when what Trump does is less than nothing, I doubt many of his listeners were all skeert they'd lose any economic advantages over the U.S. Trump isn't a do-nothing president*. He's an undo-everything president*. ...
... Benjamin Hart of New York: "On his way to Asia last weekend, President Trump told reporters that he planned to meet with his favorite autocrat, Vladimir Putin, specifically to seek out the Russian's help with North Korea. The tête-à-tête was meant to take place in Vietnam, where both leaders donned peculiar shirts on Friday to attend the annual APEC trade summit. But White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that no formal meeting had been planned between the two, citing 'scheduling conflicts.'... Sanders left open the possibility that the two would 'bump into each other and say hello,' which, judging by past experience, may be code for 'have a long, private conversation that isn't disclosed until days later.'"
** Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "The same political research firm that prepared a dossier on Trump campaign ties to Russia had unrelated information on Clinton Foundation donors that a Russian lawyer obtained and offered to ... Donald Trump's eldest son last year, three sources familiar with the matter said.... The sources told Reuters that the negative information that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya wanted to give to Republican Trump's campaign at a June 2016 meeting in New York had been dug up by Fusion GPS in an unrelated investigation.... Glenn Simpson, one of Fusion GPS' founders, met with Veselnitskaya about that litigation before and after her meeting with Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort, according to a source familiar with the matter. However, a source familiar with 10 hours of testimony Simpson gave the Senate Judiciary committee in August said he told investigators he did not know of Veselnitskaya's Trump Tower meeting until reports of it appeared in the media." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Hilarious. As Trump whines about how horrible it was for Clinton to pay a British intelligence operative for digging up dirt on him, his son was eagerly encouraging Russian nationals to give the Trump campaign dirt on Clinton prepared by the same firm -- but financed by a hostile foreign interest (thus illegal under U.S. Law). And then Junior hinted at a quid pro quo for the hostile nation in return for the Clinton dirt. You always know that when Trump accuses an opponent of something, he has done the same thing -- and then some. This story, so far, is getting no traction in the popular press. But it should. ...
... Pamela Brown, et al., of CNN: "White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller has been interviewed as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The interview brings the special counsel investigation into ... Donald Trump's inner circle in the White House. Miller is the highest-level aide still working at the White House known to have talked to investigators. Miller's role in the firing of FBI Director James Comey was among the topics discussed during the interview as part of the probe into possible obstruction of justice, according to one of the sources." ...
... Ken Dilanian & Jonathan Allen of NBC News: "After a business meeting before the Miss Universe Pageant in 2013, a Russian participant offered to 'send five women' to Donald Trump's hotel room in Moscow, his longtime bodyguard told Congress this week, according to three sources who were present for the interview. Two of the sources said the bodyguard, Keith Schiller, viewed the offer as a joke, and immediately responded, 'We don't do that type of stuff.' The two sources said Schiller's comments came in the context of him adamantly disputing the allegations made in the Trump dossier, written by a former British intelligence operative, which describes Trump having an encounter with prostitutes at the hotel during the pageant. Schiller described his reaction to that story as being, "Oh my God, that's bull----," two sources said.... One source noted that Schiller testified he eventually left Trump's hotel room door and could not say for sure what happened during the remainder of the night. Two other sources said Schiller testified he was confident nothing happened.... Schiller was grilled about the Moscow trip as part of four hours of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: IMO, Schiller just verified the first half of the Steele dossier's "golden rain" story. We won't ever know what happened next, but Schiller's testimony gives a great deal of credence to the possibility that Trump did have some kind of "room service" at the Moscow Ritz, courtesy of Kremlin pimps. As such, Schiller's testimony is both surprising & useful. ...
... Ryan Nakashima & Barbara Ortutay of the AP: "Disguised Russian agents on Twitter rushed to deflect scandalous news about Donald Trump just before last year's presidential election while straining to refocus criticism on the mainstream media and Hillary Clinton's campaign, according to an Associated Press analysis of since-deleted accounts. Tweets by Russia-backed accounts such as 'America_1st_' and 'BatonRougeVoice' on Oct. 7, 2016, actively pivoted away from news of an audio recording in which Trump made crude comments about groping women, and instead touted damaging emails hacked from Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta."
John Kelly Really Is a Nasty, Racist Prick. Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "On Monday, as the Department of Homeland Security prepared to extend the residency permits of tens of thousands of Honduran immigrants living in the United States, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly called Acting Secretary Elaine Duke to pressure her to expel them, according to current and former administration officials. Duke refused to reverse her decision and was angered by what she felt was a politically driven intrusion by Kelly and Tom Bossert, the White House homeland security adviser, who also called her about the matter, according to officials with knowledge of Monday's events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity...." Also worth reading is the part about DHS Secretary nominee Kirstjen Nielsen. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Matt Yglesias of Vox: "Top White House economic adviser Gary Cohn's background as a Goldman Sachs executive leaves him more experienced in the art of talking t really rich people than communicating with the public. That ends up making this interview with CNBC's John Harwood, published this morning, an extraordinary document, because when Harwood pushes him on a few points, Cohn ends up basically surrendering and admitting the plain truth about the Republican tax plan: that it's a bonanza for big businesses and the rich, whose main benefit for normal people is a vague hope that prosperity will trickle down from those at the top." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... AND here's Gary Cohn telling John Harwood that repealing the estate tax "benefits a lot of different people." Mrs. McC: Yes, in that Gary Cohn and Donald Trump and (poor) Wilbur Ross and David Koch and Charles Koch are "a lot of different people." Cohn's assertion was in response to Harwood's question, "Are you seriously saying with a straight face that getting rid of the estate tax is about farmers and not about very wealthy families?" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Okay, so that and the trickle-down stuff has broken the last of my stash of finely-calibrated Bullshitometers, BUT then Cohn says to Harwood, "The most excited group out there are big CEOs, about our tax plan." "This," as Jonathan Chait admits, "is 100 percent true." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Jim Tankersley, et al., of the New York Times: "Senate Republicans outlined their vision on Thursday for overhauling the tax code, proposing a one-year delay in President Trump's top priority of cutting the corporate tax rate while reinstating some prized tax breaks used by middle-class families. The Senate bill differs significantly from the House version approved by the Ways and Means committee on Thursday: It would preserve some popular tax breaks, including ones for mortgage interest and medical expenses, and would maintain a bottom tax rate of 10 percent for lower earners. But it would also jettison the state and local tax deduction entirely and delay the enforcement of a 20 percent corporate tax rate until 2019, which could rankle the White House and mute the economic growth projections that Republicans are counting on to blunt the cost of the tax cuts." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Why does the Senate bill eliminate the state & local tax deduction? Because there are no GOP senators from blue states (while there are GOP House members from blue states), & blue states have high state & local taxes. So the Senate bill is a transfer of wealth not just from the middle class to the rich, but also from blue states to red. Of course this adds insult to injury inasmuch as blue states -- in general -- already are among the biggest donor states while red states -- in general -- are more likely to be takers. As for Medlar & me, we're going to get hit hard. I resent giving more of my money to the Koch brothers. ...
... However, as Todd Frankel of the Washington Post points out, even red states are home to thousands of upper-middle-class voters who will be the goats of GOP tax "reform." Frankel cites, for instance, residents of Atlanta suburbs who balance their family budgets on "deductions for mortgage and student loan interest and state and local taxes.... Both the House version, which passed out of a critical committee Thursday, and the Senate version, released Thursday, target this group of upper-middle-class Americans to raise revenue to offset other tax cuts. The tax push illustrates the political risks of attacking provisions favored by prosperous but far-from-rich suburbanites, a powerful voting bloc that often faces the financial stress of living in increasingly pricey neighborhoods. Many in the GOP already are worried about losing their grip on this important group after Tuesday's result in the Virginia governor's race, where Democrat Ralph Northam crushed Republican Ed Gillespie by running up votes in the dense areas outside cities." ...
... Noah Lanard of Mother Jones: "On Thursday, Senate Republicans released a tax cut plan that closely tracks the business-friendly bill introduced last week in the House. But that bill has little chance of becoming law in its current form thanks to a Senate rule that requires 60 votes for legislation that adds to the deficit beyond 10 years. In the past five days, three different studies have found that the House bill would provide nearly half of its benefits to the top 1 percent of Americans, while raising taxes on tens of millions of middle-class families. The Senate bill generally sticks to that approach...." ...
... Damian Paletta & Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "Senate Republicans on Thursday plan to propose delaying a cut in the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent until 2019, four people briefed on the planning said, a major departure from President Trump's insistence on immediate changes that he says are necessary to spur the economy.... The one-year delay would lower the cost of the tax cut bill by more than $100 billion, and negotiators are trying to preserve as much revenue as they can for other changes. But it could also delay decisions by companies to move back to the United States from overseas or have companies hold off on other decisions as they wait for the corporate rate to fall." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Josh Delk of the Hill: "Prosecutors have told Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to expect federal charges to be filed against his longtime neighbor for his violent attack on Paul, sources told Fox News on Thursday. The Saturday attack, which left Paul with six broken ribs, is believed to have been politically motivated, Fox says.... [The neighbor Rene] Boucher has pleaded not guilty to a fourth-degree assault charge."
Matt Friedman of Politico: "A juror who was excused Thursday afternoon [because of a previously-scheduled vacation] from U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez's federal corruption trial said that if she had stayed on, she would have found Menendez 'not guilty on every charge.' Evelyn Arroyo-Maultsby also said other jurors' feelings about the case are mixed and she believes the result may be a hung jury."
John Cassidy of The New Yorker: "Trumpism didn't collapse on Tuesday. It did get a bloody nose, however. And, for many Democrats, the Trump backlash that was evident from Maine to Virginia raised hopes of a much bigger victory in next year's midterm elections.... In the first big set of votes since Trump became President, the America that reviles him and his backward-looking, monochromatic vision of the country stood up and made itself heard.... If he were a bigger, better person, he'd take heed of Tuesday's results and adopt a more tolerant and inclusive stance. That won't happen, of course. Trump and Trumpism won't go away of their own accord: their opponents will have to defeat them. And, in that pursuit, they have taken an encouraging first step." --safari
Senate Race
Let's see how things are going for ole Shalt-Not-Covet-Thy-Neighbors'-Daughters Roy Moore:
Michael Scherer of the Washington Post: "A growing chorus of Senate Republicans including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have called on Senate candidate Roy Moore to withdraw from a special election in Alabama if allegations prove true that the former judge initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl nearly four decades ago.... Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called on Moore to step aside as well -- and without couching his statement with 'if true' language.... The state Republican Party has the power to disqualify Moore from the election, though it is too late to remove his name from the ballot, according to the Alabama secretary of state.... Alabama state law does allow write-in votes to be cast in general elections, as long as the names are for living people and written in without using a rubber stamp or stick-on label. Despite a state law barring candidates from appearing twice on ballots in the same election cycle, Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), who lost in the primary to Moore, would be an eligible write-in candidate, said John Bennett, an official at the state secretary of state's office." ...
... Adam Raymond of New York: "Ohio Sen. Rob Portman ... added that Moore's accusers 'are on the record, so I assume' their allegations are true." ...
... Alex Shephard of the New Republic: Republicans' endorsements of Roy Moore "are particularly shameful in the wake of the Post's reporting. But they were shameful from the beginning." Shephard points to a few reasons why: "Moore believes that homosexuality should be illegal. He believes that Muslims should not be allowed to serve in Congress. He does not believe in evolution. He believes that there are communities in the United States living under Sharia law. He believes that 9/11 was divine retribution for the nation's sins. He believes that Barack Obama was not born in America. He was suspended from Alabama's Supreme Court for refusing to recognize gay marriage. He installed a 5,280-pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments on the lawn of Alabama's judicial building."
Like most Americans the president believes we cannot allow a mere allegation, in this case one from many years ago, to destroy a person's life. However, the president also believes that if these allegations are true, Judge Moore will do the right thing and step aside. -- Sarah Sanders, in a statement to the Daily Beast ...
... As the Beast notes, "By putting the ball in Moore's hands, Trump does not go nearly as far as many other Senate Republicans who have demanded that Moore withdraw from the race." Mrs. McC: What do you expect from someone who has repeatedly bragged about sexually abusing women, then dismissed his boasts as "locker-room talk" while saying women he did allegedly abuse were liars & threatening to sue them?
** Stephanie McCrummen, et al., of the Washington Post: Four women who were then between the ages of 14 and 18 "interviewed by The Washington Post in recent weeks say [Roy] Moore [who is the GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate in an Alabama special election] pursued them when ... he was in his early 30s, episodes they say they found flattering at the time, but troubling as they got older. None of the women say that Moore forced them into any sort of relationship or sexual contact." However, he kissed them & one woman, who was 14 at the time, says Moore removed her close & engaged in sexual touching. All four women are named in the story. "In a written statement, Moore denied the allegations. 'These allegations are completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign,' Moore, now 70, said. The campaign said in a subsequent statement that if the allegations were true they would have surfaced during his previous campaigns, adding 'this garbage is the very definition of fake news.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
God-Approved. There is nothing to see here. The allegations are that a man in his early 30s dated teenage girls. Even the Washington Post report says that he never had sexual intercourse with any of the girls and never attempted sexual intercourse. Also, take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. -- Jim Ziegler, Alabama state auditor, defending 30-something Roy Moore's sexual advances on a 14-year-old girl (not satire)
... Steve M.: "I'm guessing that more women will come forward and charge that Moore pursued them as teenagers. I imagine Moore will deny those allegations as well. It's quite possible that none of this will stick to him, that he'll be widely defended in the right-wing media, and that he'll still win his election in December. This should be awkward for conservatives, because they've tried to portray the recent wave of sexual predation stories as a massive liberal scandal. Even though Hollywood and media predators have been exposed exclusively by non-conservative journalists, and even though the predators have been made extremely unwelcome after their exposure, the party line on the right has been that liberals have coddled sex criminals." ...
... Ed Kilgore: "Thanks to his long record of hypercontroversial statements compounded by not one but two occasions on which he lost his gavel as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for defiance of federal law, Moore was already more vulnerable than Republicans usually are in Alabama statewide races. The current RealClearPolitics polling average gives him only a six-point lead over Democrat Doug Jones. If the new allegations aren't dispelled very quickly, Moore could be in enough trouble to convince Democrats to make a major investment in Jones, and then anything could happen.... If Moore craters, reducing the GOP Senate margin to 51/49, Democrats could have a real chance of winning back the Senate next year, despite only eight Republican seats being up for reelection." ...
... BUT. digby: Despite his harassment of teenaged beauty contestants, "Trump won Alabama with 62% of the vote. I suspect these sort of things aren't something the state's Republicans particularly care about. Unless it's a Democrat in which case they would be banging on their Bibles and speaking in tongues." ...
... Rachel Maddow puts the Roy Moore story in its pathetic context:
... Sophie Tatum of CNN: "... Steve Bannon compared the allegations of sexual misconduct with teens against ... Roy Moore to the bombshell 'Access Hollywood' tape that was released during the 2016 election, accusing The Washington Post of targeting both Moore and Donald Trump politically. 'The Bezos Amazon Washington Post that dropped that dime on Donald Trump is the same Bezos Amazon Washington Post that dropped the dime this afternoon on Judge Roy Moore,' Bannon said Thursday night. 'Now is that a coincidence? That's what I mean when I say opposition party, right?'" ...
... So, naturally ...
... Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Jeet Heer of the New Republic: "No one wants to defend Roy Moore for allegedly courting underage girls. Except Breitbart. In an article today, Breitbart pre-emptively prepared its readers for The Washington Post's explosive report that the Alabama Republican senatorial candidate had relationships with four teenage girls when he was in his 30s. Breitbart had been provided with a letter the Post sent to Moore outlining the charges, which the right-wing web site then presented in the most benign terms imaginable. This was supplemented with attacks on Moore's opponent, Democrat Doug Jones, and the Post (for various sins of liberalism, globalism, and association with Jeff Bezos). ...
... Update. Margaret Hartmann documents other right-wing media responses, many of which followed Breitbart's lead. As Akhilleus predicted, Hannity did manage to partially blame President Obama. "On Fox News, Tucker Carlson [who] ... covered the Harvey Weinstein scandal extensively..., devoted only 46 seconds to the Moore allegations."
... MEANWHILE. Andrew Kaczynski & Chris Massie of CNN: "Roy Moore ... ruled in a 1990s divorce case that a woman who had a lesbian affair couldn't visit her children unsupervised or with her partner, writing that the 'minor children will be detrimentally affected by the present lifestyle' of the mother. Moore, then a circuit judge, was ultimately removed from the case by an Alabama appeals court after the woman and her attorneys argued that he couldn't be impartial because of his views on homosexuality, according to public court documents reviewed by CNN's KFile." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Melena Ryzik, et al., of the New York Times: "Now, after years of unsubstantiated rumors about [comedian] Louis C.K. masturbating in front of associates, women are coming forward to describe what they experienced. Even amid the current burst of sexual misconduct accusations against powerful men, the stories about Louis C.K. stand out because he has so few equals in comedy. In the years since the incidents the women describe, he has sold out Madison Square Garden eight times, created an Emmy-winning TV series, and accumulated the clout of a tastemaker and auteur, with the help of a manager who represents some of the biggest names in comedy. And Louis C.K. built a reputation as the unlikely conscience of the comedy scene, by making audiences laugh about hypocrisy -- especially male hypocrisy.... [In his act,] he has all but invited comparison between his private life and his onscreen work, too: In 'I Love You, Daddy,' which is scheduled to be released next week, a character pretends to masturbate at length in front of other people, and other characters appear to dismiss rumors of sexual predation." ...
... Katherine Shaffstall of the Hollywood Reporter: "The New York premiere of Louis C.K.'s upcoming film, I Love You, Daddy, set for Thursday, has been canceled. Reps for the premiere, due to take place at the Paris Theatre, initially cited 'unexpected circumstances.' A source tells The Hollywood Reporter that New York Times story on the comedian is about to break, and the premiere was canceled in case it is damaging. Additionally, Louis C.K.'s planned appearance on CBS' The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was also canceled...."
Medlar's Sports Report. Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post: "Aaron Hernandez suffered the most severe case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy ever discovered in a person his age, damage that would have significantly affected his decision-making, judgment and cognition, researchers at Boston University revealed at a medical conference Thursday. Ann McKee, the head of BU's CTE Center, which ha studied the disease caused by repetitive brain trauma for more than a decade, called Hernandez's brain 'one of the most significant contributions to our work' because of the brain's pristine condition and the rare opportunity to study the disease in a 27-year-old."
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Reader Comments (21)
“I did not have sex with that young girl!”
Except for the young girl part, sound familiar? It’s a phrase that caused the entire Right to lose its collective mind and gallivant pell mell after a Democrat, spending tens of millions of dollars in a two year attempt to destroy him.
But here’s Alabama’s state auditor comparing Roy Moore and the young girls he pursued, plied with liquor, undressed and tried to force himself on, to Joseph and Mary. Make that four Marys, and counting, so far. At one point Ziegler declared that Moore’s attempt to coax a 14 year old to have sex with him was somewhat regrettable, but would have been perfectly okay had she been 16. Where are these people from?
Oh yeah. Alabama. I’m sure decent people in the state are thrilled to hear defenses like that.
At first I was thinking that it might not be so great if Moore dropped out in shame at revelations of such disgraceful, tawdry, and exceedingly illegal actions, allowing a less scurrilous option to jump in, thus offering a port in the storm for less extreme Republicans. But that won’t happen. Moore will not admit anything, like the good Christian he is, and even worse? He might still win. After the Trumpocalypse, nothing will surprise me. They could run Josef Mengele, and as long as some Bible bangers gave him the thumbs up and vouched for his racist bona fides, he’d be headed to Congress with a big fat R after his name.
Just a thought. Would the Confederate outrage meter in Alabama, which seems broken, given the needle’s lack of movement after the discovery that holy man Roy Moore, god’s Personal choice to replace another unctuous squid, Jeffbo Sessions, is fond of forcing himself on young girls, be jumping into the red had the Post reported that he had been making the moves on underage boys? In other words, does the native, homegrown homophobia trump (heh-heh) hyper-partisan tribal protectionism? Or would tribal instincts overcome their revulsion at thoughts of their hero trying to get a 14 year old boy to touch his 32 year old pee-pee? My guess is, after throwing up for a few hours, they’d all find a way to blame it all on Obama and Clinton.
@Akhilleus: I wondered about that, too. And I expect that many, if not most, of Moore's loyal troops would find a way to "justify" their "faith" in him. So, yeah, Clinton/Obama (never mind that Obama is younger than some of Moore's [alleged] victims). Or "youthful indiscretion." Or "sexual experimentation." Or, as we're hearing now, "libtard media liars." Most of the faithful just could not wrap their heads around the idea that Moore was gay, even tho his extreme -- I'd say insane -- homophobia suggests he is attracted to men.
I'd attribute the continued local support for Moore to a few things:
As Rachel Maddow so effectively illustrates, these people are accustomed to their politicians "disappointing" them. And, yeah, they do blame the messenger for slapping them in the face with example after example of how they voted for the crooks & creeps who "disappointed" them.
But there's also the Bible thing. I have always said that what Christianity has over some other world religions is its doctrine of redemption. Christians "pay" for their "sins" by confessing, so saying, "I have sinned" puts them right with god -- and with the congregation. An "upstanding" Christian can go out Saturday night & break a few commandments, & as long as he tells God he's sorry on Sunday morning, he's A-okay. Human nature being what it is, a good percentage of people who vote for the Roy Moores of the world have done things just as bad as Moore has done. If they condemn Moore, if they don't give him a good Christian "second chance," they're condemning themselves, too, AND they're betraying a central tenet of Christian belief.
As to condemning "the enemy," i.e., people who don't share their ideological beliefs, they can find this in the Bible, too. The Old Testament is full of God's horrifying vengeance on the Jews' enemies. One can hardly read Ezekiel without a barf bag at the ready. So it's quite consistent to believe, as Roy Moore himself has said, that the 9/11 terrorist attack was God's vengeance on the secularists who went to work in the World Trade Center that day, and it's okay not to set aside federal money for the victims of Hurricane Sandy because Sandy was God's way of sending yet another message to the liberal elites of New York & New Jersey. South Texas? Well, that's another story. Send money. At least to the nice, white Christians.
It isn't only people with "first-rate intelligence" who can "hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time & still retain the ability to function." Some mighty dim-witted evangelicals do that every day & go blithely on with their business.
"Also, take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus."
So if the holier-than-though Roy Moore had only had sacred sexual relations with his 14-year-old "partner", he might have even made himself a baby Jesus. And that possibility makes this whole situation okay. But sexual endeavors out of wedlock is a deadly sin.
Mind benders.
There’s a bit of a problem with the Joseph-Mary analogy. Mary was a virgin at the time of the birth. Joseph wasn’t the daddy. God was the daddy. Which, in current winger terminology, makes Joseph a “cuck”, a term Bannon and other Nazi pigs love to throw around. And I’m going to suggest that, if Mary was to keep her virgin status intact, there’d be no funny business ever after. Not even of the nasty Roy Mooreish-feel-me-up-through-my-tighty-whities variety.
Another Christianist-Confederate analogy sadly exploded by their own beliefs.
Must be hard to wake up every day knowing you’re a repulsive douchebag who supports sexual abuse of minors to get a few votes.
More (alleged) principles gone astray, Bess Levin,
over on Vanity Fair follows up with a missing-in-words-and-deeds report on "...Gary Cohn's lost soul, alas"
"...Sources...asked about the (Harwood) interview were stunned by how much credibility Cohn had burned on Trump’s behalf. “I just don’t think you can take seriously anything he says about anything,” former policy adviser Bruce Bartlett, who served in the Reagan administration, told Levin.
In addition, in August, after agonizing over the president’s equivocal remarks about white supremacy, Cohn ultimately chose not to quit. And, Mr.-I-insist-on-loyalty-Trump rewarded him by giving the Federal Reserve chair job to Jerome Powell.
As Alabama lore has it the only sin worth getting worked up about is "A dead girl or a live boy." Southern literature is chocked full of daddy's fathering their daughter's children, brothers having their way with their sisters, not to mention, of course, the white plantation owner's siring a whole slew of black children. Homosexuality is verboten as is, I assume, the murder of a female. Other than that anything goes. Unless more women attest to Roy boy's lust for "pretty young things" he probably will muster through and take Session's seat. If that happens, how will the senators who have come out and said he has no place in Congress deal with him? Except for McCain the rest have had the caveat "IF" inserted in their dismissals–-if the allegations are true which I think have been verified, but hey....
And what is with these men whose need to expose their Johnsons and then continue with showing women what they are capable of? I can only imagine as little boys they were chastised for fondling their privates, made to feel ashamed, maybe even felt they were sinning, etc. There is something truly sick in this behavior –––it's like serial wagging the willy––very different than the "normal" sexual harassment where it seems, power play comes in and "plain old nasty man wants more nookie from cute cookies" kind of thing. Bill Cosby, too, is in a different category––his modus operandi was criminal and perverted in a much more horrific way. And yet, however way men ply women (or in Roy's case young girls) the result is lasting humiliation and feelings of being raped. Again I go back to how we are raising our sons–-something goes awry when males resort to these kinds of sexual deviancies. BUT––let's keep in mind we are in an age where secrets can no longer linger in the dark closets––OUT! OUT! damn spot and within all those with spots there are millions without them.
@Akhilleus: Right you are. In the nativity story, Joseph was "betrothed" to Mary at the time she got pregnant. They weren't supposed to fool around. Mary's pregnancy by some mysterious "other" was grounds for breaking the betrothal. Thanks to the intervention of an angel, Joseph found out who the "real father" was, so he went ahead & married Mary despite the community's whispers about the couple.
No one who believes the Christian birth story thinks Joseph was the father, which is what Ziegler asserts. The whole point is that Mary did not have sexual relations with
thatany man. I guess Ziegler is just one of us condemned heathens.Other than the age difference -- which I suppose is the point -- I don't see where Roy Moore's actions fit into the nativity story. But, as Donald Trump would say, Merry Christmas!
In today's NYT, a poignant essay by Matti Friedman, in time for Veteran's Day (Remembrance Day in places where the British Empire ran their show.)
One of the things that also didn't change after WWI -- despite the popularity of poems, memoirs and reflections promulgating the lesson that war is inglorious waste, in which your battlefields later become workaday farm fields, shopping malls and apartment complexes -- is that young men (and women, now) can still be persuaded that they should risk their lives for dirt, or an idea, or for their fellow soldiers. And when they lose that bet, that their parents can be consoled with "the nobility of their sacrifice."
The reason we still have "wars" (a misnomer these days) is that other people are willing to have them. We don't get to decline the invitation, I suppose.
But how we still persuade young people that it is a glorious activity is beyond me.
PS - Suggestion: tomorrow, don't "Thank a vet" unless you're a relative. Many vets consider it vacuous.
@Patrick: I'm not sure we convince young people they're about to engage in a "glorious activity," but that they're being offered (1) career opportunities which they otherwise would not have, with (2) possibly a chance to kick ass in some exotic place with -- contra Trump -- only a slight chance of injury or death.
Johnny Still Gets His Gun
One other element in the Call to War is how combat is portrayed in the popular media. Wimpy peacenik movies are nowhere to be seen. War movies? Shit blowing up, heads shot off, bodies flying in the air, enormous explosions, blood, guts, bits of flesh atomized? Dozens of those kinds of movies are released every year, not to mention the TV shows and video games. IMDB publishes a list of "Most popular War Features" by the year. In 2013 there were over 100. And those were only the ones they termed "most popular".
Granted, a number of these are films that are tangentially connected to war, escape from a prisoner of war camp, displaced refugees, etc. but the vast majority are of the shit-blowing up, people being mowed down variety. "Call of Duty" is an incredibly popular, immensely violent, but immersive and very compelling video game. I've heard kids talk about it saying things like they can't wait to join the military so they can get them some too. Video games are rated by how realistic the violence is.
Journalist Chris Hedges, a few years ago, wrote a book called "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning", the primary idea being that the call of war seduces and envelops a society. The Pentagon maintains a special office just to provide "U.S. military assistance in producing feature motion pictures, television shows, documentaries, music videos, commercial advertisements, CD-ROM games, and other audiovisual programs..." Why? One reason, I'm sure, is to have a hand in what some filmmaker might want to say that the military doesn't like. Another might be to ensure a certain level of authenticity. But not too authentic. Nothing that might reflect badly. Most importantly, they see media representation of war as a recruitment tool.
After the Tom Cruise hit "Top Gun" was released in 1986, the US Navy saw recruitment for Navy pilots rise by 500%. Five hundred percent! Recruitment for wars has been going on since war first became a thing. Stories and legends about war and heroism in battle are legion and probably older than speech itself. Some hominid, trying to get his homies to go stone some other tribe made hand gestures to recruit their hairy asses.
Some of our greatest literary milestones function perfectly well as recruitment propaganda. "Beowulf" tells the story of a great warrior who kills a monster and saves a country. "The Iliad" is a spectacular paean to the glory of battle, even though Homer does go out of his way to depict the less glorious side of war and closes the story with Akhilleus and Priam grieving over the loss of friends and family, a terrible price paid, for basically, a guy who was pissed because his wife ran off with a douchebag.
Then go on from there. The crusades were ordained by god. Can't get a much better poster boy for war than that. The Hundred Years War. The Thirty Years War, a dozen or so civil wars, and hundreds of major to minor skirmishes from Agincourt to Dunkirk. They all have been glorified. Shakespeare did a bang up job with Agincourt. Listen to the St. Crispin's Day speech from "Hank Cinq" and you'll want to grab your longbow out of the closet, run out of the house and pin cushion the first person you see. The war to end all wars, as horrific as it was, didn't end shit. Twenty years later, we were all back at it again, with even better ways to kill people. The fucking atom bomb for one, which the current guy wonders why we're not dropping more of, because that was so cool.
Even weaselly deserters and cowardly draft dodgers like the Decider and the Pretender get mileage out of talking war, war they had no stomach for themselves.
For every anti-war film like "Born on the Fourth of July" or "Paths of Glory" (a GREAT movie, by the way), there are a thousand "Rambo's" and "We Were Soldiers".
Full disclosure, I love certain war movies. There's something about the stakes, the anxiety, the personal stories, the life and death struggle that make some of these narratives eminently compelling. But because of that, even the ones that try to show how bad it all can be, end up with a certain patina of the glory of it all.
What we have to rely on most, as a society, are leaders who understand the seriousness of what it means to ask men and women to go to war, to kill and be killed. Right now, we don't have that. We have a three year old who thinks nuclear war would be kinda fun.
Dalton Trumbo wrote one of the most startling anti-war stories ever published (then made into a film) "Johnny Got His Gun", about a kid who goes to war, thinking of glory and wakes up in hospital, no arms, no legs, blind, no face in fact, and unable to speak. His mind is completely intact, but his life is over and he is a prisoner in his own shattered body. It is, in a word, harrowing. But Trumbo also wrote the action movie "Spartacus" about a famous slave revolt against Rome, battle sequences galore, burning war machines, heads chopped off, mass crucifixions, all kinds of good shit. Guess which is more popular. Do you know anyone who has ever read the first? Or even heard of it? Now tell me if you know anyone who has never seen, or at least heard of, the second.
And there you go.
This is why Johnny still gets his gun. And now Janie too.
@Akhilleus: I read “Johnny Got His Gun.” I have never read any novel that filled me with more anxiety & dread. I would not have chosen to read it, but I was taking a class from Edgar Doctorow & he assigned it. I'm glad he did. I'll never read the story again though. Every page was gut-wrenching.
One other gnawing bit about that ridiculous comparison of Roy ("Touch me there, little girl") Moore and Joseph...
We don't get much information about Joseph, but what we do get indicates that he was a good dad and a decent man. After the birth of Christ, he is visited by an angel in a dream informing him of the plan of Herod's to kill all infants in the land, just to be sure he doesn't miss the one he's looking for. Joseph doesn't hesitate to spirit the baby and his mother off to Egypt where they stay for a couple of years until Herod kicks.
A few years later, back home, Joseph takes the wife and kid off to Jerusalem for a feast. They head home and realize they don't have the boy with them. They rush back to Jerusalem and look for him for three days until they find him in the temple impressing the elders with his mastery of baseball trivia (Hack Wilson really had 191 RBI's?). Personally, I've always wondered why the hell they didn't make sure they had the kid in first place, I mean, light of the world and all that. You don't want to leave him with hooligans shooting dice by the side of the road, but never mind. They went back and got him, and that's what parents do.
During the middle ages, folk stories about the life of Christ propagated like mad. There were all kinds of tales designed to feed the interest of the faithful with more, shall we say, "interesting" stuff than you get in the gospels. Some of these are kind of Harry Potterish, with Jesus, as a boy, having fun with his powers, climbing up beams of sunshine and turning playmates into piglets (sounds a tad mean if you ask me), and a bunch of miraculous hijinks, even though I think a few were just card tricks, but there are also stories of Joseph's kindness to his son and wife.
Medieval art is full of depictions of these tales. The flight to Egypt is an especially popular theme with Joseph always on foot leading the donkey bearing Mary and the baby. Always looking out for them.
Joseph seems, in all events, a kind, decent sort of chap who took his job of serving as caretaker and guardian of the family seriously. He was a blue collar kind of guy who worked hard and led a good life.
How does this compare with a lecherous slimeball who, like Jeff Sessions, used his position of power to attack those he didn't care for? Who sought to demean and even imprison anyone he felt didn't subscribe to his personal "morality"? Moore is a caretaker of his own career. He uses religion as a club to beat those he doesn't care for and to pump up his own grandiose pretensions. And on the side, he tried to boink underage girls.
He'd make a better comparison with the denizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. Prick.
Marie,
I'm not surprised that you've read "Johnny Got His Gun". And I've always admired E.L. Doctorow, and even more now that I hear he assigned that book in a class. I'm sure a few other people out here in RC World have read it, but it's not exactly best seller material.
And "gut-wrenching" is as good a description as I can come up with. I remember reading it in high school. It haunted me for years. I was carrying it in the hallway at school one day when a nun passing by noticed it. She was an English teacher, looked at me a bit archly and said "Good one." She immediately went up a few notches in my book.
If I can move away from standard issue Right Wing Hypocrisy for a moment, how's this for a stat?
According to Gallup, "Since 1946, when presidents are above 50% approval, their party loses an average of 14 seats in the U.S. House in the midterm elections, compared with an average loss of 36 seats when presidents are below that mark."
Control of the House, which has seemed irretrievable for some time now, is not entirely impossible. Democrats need about 24 seats to regain control of the monkey house. The above stat of the party in power losing 36 seats when their president has low approval numbers is an AVERAGE. Not only is the little king below 50%, he's below 40%. And 50 seats are up in the air for 2018. Not only that, but a bunch of Republicans are calling it quits without waiting for the hammer to hit them they way it has in Virginia and elsewhere last week.
AND there's plenty of time left for President* PussyGrabberFootInMouth to say and do a lot more stupid, illegal, unconstitutional, and perhaps traitorous things between now and midterms. And don't forget Mueller Time.
One caveat here, however, is that gerrymandering, vote suppression and cheating by Confederates is at an all-time high, so there's that.
Still...
(Just looking for a ray of sunshine on this Friday afternoon.)
Historical gross statistics on House off-year elections are interesting, but no longer predictive. Since the district realignments of 2010, prediction will have to rely upon district by district analysis. Voting distribution in a district is not random, therefore not susceptible to historical extrapolation (i.e. you can do better than to extrapolate ... you can count).
All that said, the 2016 election and the 2017 off-year "sample" indicates that the events of the past year may change a major factor in 2018, Democratic voter turnout. If the Democrats can put forth a broad proposal that at once offers hope and illuminates GOP moves to consolidate plutocrat power, and not just bash DiJiT, we could see a big turn in 2018. The D's need to do constant GOTV, from now on.
But in the end the problem remains: disengaged, poorly educated, easily misled voters. That won't be fixed in my lifetime. But somehow we need to educate people on the unique advantages available in this country, and wean them from authoritarian tendencies and demonstrate the benefits of effective, honest governance.
How do we do that without descending into state propaganda?
Patrick wrote "But somehow we need to educate people on the unique advantages available in this country, and wean them from authoritarian tendencies and demonstrate the benefits of effective, honest governance.
How do we do that without descending into state propaganda?"
I'm not sure, but let's get Democrats to the polls in record numbers and we'll figure it out later. We may be facing trying to re-jigger a lifetime of propaganda and conditioning for many, so we might have to write them off. I'm not concerned. They write us off all the time. And if they're the sort who will vote for a pervert like Roy Moore, fuck them and the diseased horses they rode in on.
We've got to shoot for the future.
Patrick,
Ignorant, disengaged, deceived voters? Surely untold numbers of them, but many are just engaged enough to know Republicans will go to any length to support their single issue, which in most cases would be anti-abortion, untrammeled religious rights, or the right to own an arsenal. Hard Right Christians are still with the Pretender and his party all the way, despite the deliberate harm his party is doing to them on all other fronts. Because they're single issue, they can't/won't see beyond their narrow focus, and all these are promises (certainly not health care and not succor for American workers) the Pretender has kept.
Our hope lies in political movements (to provide one example) like the Fight for Fifteen that have proved to energize people across class, race and party lines.
Just had the opportunity to interview Jonathan Rosenblum, the organizer primarily responsible for putting together the coalition that fought successfully for the $15 wage in Sea-Tac, Washington, which has spread in one form or another to Seattle and across the entire state. His book, "The Fight for Fifteen" detailing the accomplishment is available and I see "The Progressive" ran an excerpt from it some months ago.
My time with him and the mounting energy I see being displayed on the left since the Pretender's ascension does give me hope, despite all the ideational and structural barriers the Right has successfully put in place in the last forty years.
"In Trieste: Old men with sad stories gather every afternoon in the seaside coffee shops. [ this epigram from Hedge's book has always haunted me–-used it in a poem I wrote and dedicated to him]
"The moral certitude of the state in wartime is a kind of fundamentalism. And this dangerous messianic brand of religion, one where self-doubt is minimal has come increasingly to color the modern world of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard divinity School, used to tell us that we would end our careers fighting an ascendant fundamentalist movement, or, as he liked to say, “the Christian fascists.” He was not a scholar to be disregarded, however implausible such a scenario seemed at the time. There is a growing danger of a growing fusion between those in the state who wage war-both for and against modern states- and those who believe they understand and can act as agents for God.
There are few sanctuaries in war. But one is provided by couples in love. They are not able to staunch the slaughter. They are often powerless and can themselves often become victims. But it was with them, seated around a wood stove, usually over a simple meal, that I found sanity and was reminded of what it means to be human. Love kept them grounded. It was to such couples that I retreated during the wars in Central America, the Middle East, and the Balkans. Love, when it is deep and sustained by two individuals, includes self-giving-often self sacrifice-as well as desire. For the covenant of love is such that it recognizes both the fragility and the sanctity of the individual. It recognizes itself in the other. It alone can save us."
From War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning: Chris Hedges
P.S. AK–-that nun who give thumbs up for noticing the book you were carrying I assume wasn't your favorite Sister Praxedes otherwise fondly referred to as "Prick Pack."
Akhilleus and Marie:
I knew of the book and movie "Johnny Got His Gun" but had neither read the book nor seen the movie until a few years ago when I borrowed the DVD from my local library. I agree with Marie's description of it as gut-wrenching. I consider it one of the most horrific movies I've ever seen. Like Marie, I will never engage with it again.
Likewise, a few years back I picked up a copy of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" from the Friends of the Library bookstore, read it in one sitting, and returned it the next day. I'm glad I read it, but as with the movie, once is enough. I also read "The Handmaid's Tale" when it was first published -- and I remember thinking "thank goodness we are not that country.
Of course, now we are "that country," and all three of those gut-wrenching narratives haunt me to this day.
On the bright side, our petition for an amendment to the Michigan constitution to prevent future gerrymandering looks like it will succeed in garnering enough valid signatures to be placed on the 2018 ballot. So there is that....
Rose,
As a big fan of Cormac McCarthy’s I was a bit skeptical when my brother told me, after reading it, that “The Road” was his greatest novel. I held on to the idea that “Blood Meridian” or “The Crossing” or perhaps “Cities on the Plain” would get that nod.
I was wrong.
“The Road” was like a kick in the head. When I read that scene toward the end where the boy wakes up next to his father ( you know the one), I had to put the book down to weep. It was a while before I could continue. It’s hard to think about it even now.
I’m thankful that there are artists who can create works that force us to confront the darkness while holding out hope for a better tomorrow. We can use as much of that as we can stand these days.