;)
The Commentariat -- September 15, 2021
Late Morning Update:
Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "The [California] recall does offer at least one lesson to Democrats in Washington ahead of next year's midterm elections: The party's pre-existing blue- and purple-state strategy of portraying Republicans as Trump-loving extremists can still prove effective with the former president out of office, at least when the strategy is executed with unrelenting discipline, an avalanche of money and an opponent who plays to type.... For Republicans eying [President] Biden's falling approval ratings and growing hopeful about their 2022 prospects, the failed recall is less an ominous portent than a cautionary reminder about what happens when they put forward candidates who are easy prey for the opposition." ~~~
~~~ Eric Bradner & Dan Merica of CNN: "California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom delivered a decisive answer to the question of whether voters would penalize those who enacted strict policies aimed at slowing the coronavirus pandemic.... Republicans sought a replay of 2003, when actor Arnold Schwarzenegger attracted support across ideological lines and voters decided to boot then-Gov. Gray Davis. This time, though, the party's leading candidate, talk radio host Larry Elder, stuck much closer to conservative orthodoxy -- making it difficult to attract the sort of broad bipartisan support that it takes for a GOP candidate to win in deep-blue California.... Here are five takeaways from California's recall election[.]" ~~~
~~~ Marie: It might be worth bearing in mind that Californians know Gavin Newsom is a jerk. I mean, he married Kimberly Guilfoyle, (Don Jr. loud-mouthed girlfriend) then cheated on her with the wife of his campaign manager. But they also know Gavin is no Larry Elder.
Stephanie Kirchgaessner of the Guardian: "The FBI director, Chris Wray, is facing new scrutiny of the bureau's handling of its 2018 background investigation of Brett Kavanaugh, including its claim that the FBI lacked the authority to conduct a further investigation into the then supreme court nominee. At the heart of the new questions that Wray will face later this week, when he testifies before the Senate judiciary committee, is a 2010 Memorandum of Understanding that the FBI has recently said constrained the agency's ability to conduct any further investigations of allegations of misconduct. It is not clear whether that claim is accurate, based on a close reading of the MOU, which was released in court records following a Freedom of Information Act request. The FBI was called to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation process in 2018, after he was accused of assault by Christine Blasey Ford.... The FBI closed its extended background check of Kavanaugh after four days and did not interview either Blasey Ford or Kavanaugh. The FBI also disclosed to the Senate this June -- two years after questions were initially asked -- that it had received 4,500 tips from the public during the background check and that it had shared all 'relevant tips' with the White House counsel at that time. It is not clear whether those tips were ever investigated."
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Wednesday are here.
~~~~~~~~~~
It appears that we are enjoying an overwhelmingly 'no' vote tonight here in the state of California, but 'no' is not the only thing that was expressed tonight. We said yes to science. We said yes to vaccines. We said yes to ending this pandemic. We said yes to people's right to vote without fear of fake fraud and voter suppression. We said yes to women's fundamental constitutional right to decide for herself what she does with her body, her faith, her future. We said yes to diversity. -- Gavin Newsom, to reporters, late Tuesday ~~~
~~~ Shawn Hubler of the New York Times: "A Republican-led bid to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom of California ended in defeat late Tuesday.... The vote spoke to the power liberal voters wield in California.... But it also reflected the state's recent progress against the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 67,000 lives in California. The state has one of the nation's highest vaccination rates and one of its lowest rates of new virus cases -- which the governor tirelessly argued to voters were the results of his vaccine and mask requirements.... The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Newsom, who had won in a 62 percent landslide in 2018, less than an hour after the polls closed on Tuesday. About 66 percent of the eight million ballots counted by 10 p.m. Pacific time said the governor should stay in office.... Considered a bellwether for the 2022 midterm elections, the recall outcome came as a relief to Democrats nationally." The AP' story is here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post is running a tally of the vote. At 5 am ET, more than 64% of voters voted no on the recall, and almost 36% voted yes. The tally also appears on the Post's front page at this time.
~~~ Thomas Fuller, et al., of the New York Times: "In a state famous for its acts of direct democracy..., detractors of this year's special election say the recall process is democracy gone off the rails, a distraction from crises that require the government's attention, and a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars.... Many voters who went to the polls on Tuesday said the election was an unwelcome distraction that preoccupied Mr. Newsom.... The election, which is costing the state $276 million to administer, has at times had a circus atmosphere to it, not least when one of the 46 candidates on the ballot brought a large bear to a campaign rally. No one in the state's Democratic leadership is suggesting the elimination of recalls, which are baked into the State Constitution. But many are vowing to make it more difficult for them to qualify for the ballot, or to change the rules on how a successor is chosen.... It will take a referendum to decide whether to change this particular referendum.... Critics of the recall process say it is fundamentally antidemocratic. With a simple majority, voters could recall Mr. Newsom, who was well ahead in the polls in the final days of campaigning. But his replacement would be chosen by plurality." ~~~
~~~ Marie: It isn't just that the recall is anti-democratic, as the article well explains, but it is also a useful tool for Republicans in a majority-Democratic state. For statewide offices, recalls are about the only way a Republican can win an election (unless she's a popular celebrity). ~~~
~~~ A related KGO (San Francisco) story is here.
** Milley, Pelosi Agreed Trump Was Crazy. Jamie Gangel, et al., of CNN: "Two days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol..., Donald Trump's top military adviser, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, single-handedly took top-secret action to limit Trump from potentially ordering a dangerous military strike or launching nuclear weapons, according to 'Peril,' a new book by legendary journalist Bob Woodward and veteran Washington Post reporter Robert Costa. Woodward and Costa write that Milley, deeply shaken by the assault, 'was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies.' Milley worried that Trump could 'go rogue,' the authors write.... In response, Milley took extraordinary action, and called a secret meeting in his Pentagon office on January 8 to review the process for military action, including launching nuclear weapons.... Milley's fear that Trump could do something unpredictable came from experience. Right after Trump lost the election, Milley discovered the President [secretly] had signed a military order to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by January 15, 2021, before he left the White House." Read on. Whodathunk, for instance, that Dan Quayle would save the day? (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Update. The Washington Post's story, by Isaac Stanley-Becker, is here: "Twice in the final months of the Trump administration, the country's top military officer was so fearful that the president's actions might spark a war with China that he moved urgently to avert armed conflict. In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People's Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ The New York Times story by Michael Schmidt is here: "... the book details how Mr. Trump's presidency essentially collapsed in his final months in office, particularly after his election loss and the start of his campaign to deny the results. Top aides -- including General Milley, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Attorney General William P. Barr -- became convinced that they needed to take drastic measures to stop him from trampling on American democracy or setting off an international conflict, and General Milley thought that Mr. Trump had declined mentally in the aftermath of the election, according to the book." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Jamie Gangel, et al., of CNN: "In their new book 'Peril,' Bob Woodward and Robert Costa document how top Republicans struggled to manage Donald Trump's exit from the White House while also trying to convince him to help the party down the road. Filled with scenes of backbiting, temper tantrums, and expletive-filled phone calls, the book depicts a GOP in chaos, desperately trying to preserve its relationship with Trump." ~~~
~~~ ** Pence Is No Hero. Greg Sargent of the Washington Post: "Ever since Mike Pence announced on Jan. 6 that he lacked power to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election in Congress, it's been widely suggested that the vice president was one of the few heroes in this ugly tale. But new revelations in the forthcoming book by Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa cast doubt on this account. And the new details also hint at lines of inquiry about Jan. 6 that will shape aspects of the House select committee's examination of those events." ~~~
~~~ Steve M.: "I think [Trump] was unlikely to drop a bomb on a foreign enemy under the circumstances -- one important reason being that the people he truly hates are his domestic enemies.... General Milley's efforts to prevent the president from doing something rash and irreversible seem understandable (and reminiscent of the last days of Nixon) -- but to your right-wing relatives, what Woodward and Costa are reporting just confirms everything they've suspected throughout Trump's time in politics: that a globalist Deep State exists, that it spent the years of Trump's presidency seeking to thwart everything he tried to do, and that this cabal cares more about China than it does about America. Marco Rubio has already called on President Biden to fire General Milley, but that's mild compare to what's coming...."
Dan Diamond of the Washington Post: "Senior advisers in the Trump administration in February 2020 privately discussed the government's 'critical mistakes' in preparing for the coronavirus, countering optimistic claims ... Donald Trump made in public, according to emails obtained by the House select subcommittee on the pandemic. 'In truth we do not have a clue how many are infected in the USA. We are expecting the first wave to spread in the US within the next 7 days,' adviser Steven Hatfill wrote to Peter Navarro, the president's trade director, on Feb. 29, 2020.... After receiving Hatfill's message -- accompanied by an admonishment that 'from now on, the Government must be honest' -- Navarro privately warned Trump in a March 1, 2020, memo that the federal response was 'NOT fast enough' and that a 'very serious public health emergency' was looming. Trump continued to downplay the virus's risks in public, assuring Americans the pandemic was being contained and that his government was being "totally proactive" in its response.'"
Brady Dennis, et al., of the Washington Post: "The United States and Europe will launch an international push to reduce global methane emissions by nearly a third by 2030, as part of a broader effort to more aggressively combat climate change, according to people familiar with the plan and a planning document provided to The Washington Post. U.S. and European Union officials plan to ask other key nations to sign on to the Global Methane Pledge as soon as this Friday, when President Biden and leaders of major economies gather for a virtual, closed-door meeting on climate and energy issues."
Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "An FBI agent accused of failing to properly investigate former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar -- and lying about it later -- has been fired by the FBI, days before a high-stakes public hearing into the bureau's flawed investigation of the child sex-abuse case involving Simone Biles and other world-famous gymnasts. Michael Langeman, who as a supervisory special agent in the FBI's Indianapolis office interviewed gymnast McKayla Maroney in 2015 about her alleged abuse at the hands of Nassar, lost his job last week, two people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.... A July report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz harshly criticized Langeman -- without naming him -- as well as his former boss, Jay Abbott, for their handling of the Nassar case.... FBI firings are relatively rare; most investigators facing serious discipline choose to retire or resign before they can be terminated."
Manu Raju of CNN: "Senate Democrats are proposing new legislation to overhaul voting laws after months of discussions to get all 50 of their members behind a single bill, allowing their caucus to speak with one voice on the issue even though it stands virtually no chance of becoming law.... The new proposal will almost certainly fall well short of the 60 votes needed to break a GOP-led filibuster. Plus Democrats lack the votes to change the rules and weaken the filibuster as many in their party want them to do, meaning the plan is expected to stall when the Senate casts a procedural vote on the matter next week. The proposal, which will be introduced by Senate Rules Chair Amy Klobuchar, also has the endorsement of Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who had been the lone member of his caucus to oppose his party's more sweeping overhaul -- known as the For the People Act -- which passed the House earlier this year." The Washington Post's story is here. (Also linked yesterday.)
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: "On Tuesday...., Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, used a hearing intended for sworn testimony from the secretary of state on the Afghanistan withdrawal to allege that President Biden is mentally incompetent. Risch first devoted his opening statement to continuing the long-running Republican narrative. 'We know for a fact the president of the United States is somewhat disadvantaged here in that someone is calling the shots. He can't even speak without someone in the White House censoring it or signing off on it,' the senator claimed. 'As recently as yesterday, in mid-sentence, he was cut off by someone in the White House who makes the decision that the president of the United States is not speaking correctly.... This is a puppeteer act.' Then, as the first Republican questioner, Risch used his time to elaborate on the slander.... [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken chuckled as he replied that the loose-lipped Biden 'speaks very clearly and very deliberately for himself.'" Risch continued in this vein. "The episode is worth unpacking because it shows, in miniature, how misinformation infects the Republican Party, rapidly spreads through partisan media and contaminates elected GOP leaders -- who amplify and defend the falsehood, even when it's shown to be wrong." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Risch's lie is ludicrous, and he has to know it. He based it on a report that staff cut off President Biden during a reporters' pool spray. At nearly every presidential pool spray in recent American history, staff cut off the Q&A after a predetermined period of time. The president or president* may want to continue the back-and-forth, or he at least wants to appear to be happy to answer questions, so staff are assigned to play their part by cutting short the session. Risch's own staff probably has done the same for him. As a supporter of a president* who actually was/is mentally unstable, Risch is trying to project Trump's mental deficiencies onto a Democratic president. ~~~
~~~ Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post's fact-checker, dives into the particulars and gives Risch (and the RNC, which initiated the fake story), four Pinocchios for their "bogus claim."
Zachary Cohen of CNN: "A few months before rioters stormed the US Capitol, the Department of Homeland Security restricted the flow of open-source intelligence reports about 'election-related threats' to law enforcement, citing First Amendment concerns, according to documents reviewed by CNN. The revelations not only add to a growing concerns about intelligence gathering, but they also raise questions about a key staffer on the committee investigating the insurrection and his previous role in determining how threat information that came from public sources, was shared with law enforcement prior to the Capitol attack. Joseph Maher, who changed the protocols around disseminating open-source information as head of DHS' intelligence arm, is now on the staff of the House Select Committee on January 6." (Also linked yesterday.)
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "You can draw a straight line from the 'war on terror' to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, from the state of exception that gave us mass surveillance, indefinite detention, extraordinary rendition and 'enhanced interrogation' to the insurrectionist conviction that the only way to save America is to subvert it.... It is with all of this in mind that I found it galling to watch George W. Bush speak on Saturday.... In Shanksville, Pa..., Bush voiced his dismay at the stark polarization and rigid partisanship of modern American politics.... Bush spoke as if he were just an observer.... But ... Bush was an active participant in the politics he now bemoans.... Bush was noteworthy for the partisanship of his White House and the ruthlessness of his political tactics, for using the politics of fear to pound his opponents into submission.... His critique of the Trump movement is not wrong, but it is fatally undermined by his own conduct in office." (Also linked yesterday.)
Mark Mazzetti & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "Three former American intelligence officers hired by the United Arab Emirates to carry out sophisticated cyberoperations admitted to hacking crimes and to violating U.S. export laws that restrict the transfer of military technology to foreig governments, according to court documents made public on Tuesday. The documents detail a conspiracy by the three men to furnish the Emirates with advanced technology and to assist Emirati intelligence operatives in breaches aimed at damaging the perceived enemies of the small but powerful Persian Gulf nation. The men helped the Emirates, a close American ally, gain unauthorized access to 'acquire data from computers, electronic devices and servers around the world, including on computers and servers in the United States,' prosecutors said. The three men worked for DarkMatter, a company that is effectively an arm of the Emirati government. They are part of a trend of former American intelligence officers accepting lucrative jobs from foreign governments...." ~~~
~~~ Marie: I don't understand why these guys weren't charged with treason, but they weren't. To use skills learned in the employment of the U.S. government against that government looks like treason to me. I would welcome the advice of anybody who wants to explain me out of my perception.
Katie Benner of the New York Times: "The Justice Department asked a federal judge late Tuesday to issue an order that would prevent Texas from enacting a law that prohibits nearly all abortions, ratcheting up a fight between the Biden administration and the state's Republican leaders. The Justice Department argued in its emergency motion that the state adopted the law, known as Senate Bill 8, 'to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights,' reiterating an argument the department made last week when it sued Texas to prohibit enforcement of the contentious new legislation. 'It is settled constitutional law that "a state may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before viability,"' the department said in the lawsuit. 'But Texas has done just that.'"
How Amy ... Might Know She's a Political Hack. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: "Justice Amy Coney Barrett's recent remarks in Louisville, alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the architect of the frantic rush to put her on the Supreme Court in 2020 even as people were voting in the presidential election, set off gales of laughter, much eye-rolling and a new appreciation for the necessity of term limits for justices.... Are we really to believe that the conservative justices who held up the former president's anti-Muslim travel ban, who knocked down an extension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, who undercut unions' ability to organize, who repeatedly tried to overturn the Affordable Care Act and who adhered to a disingenuous if not tortured reading of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act just coincidentally stumbled onto positions supported by the right-wing promoters of their nominations and confirmations?... When the highest court is now a forum for raw exercise of political power, a president's picks should not be empowered to serve for decades." (Also linked yesterday.)
Heather Long & Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "U.S. poverty fell overall in 2020, a surprising decline that is largely a result of the swift and large federal aid that Congress enacted at the start of the pandemic to try to prevent widespread financial hardship as the nation experienced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The U.S. Census reported that the official poverty rate rose slightly in 2020 to 11.4 percent, up from a record low 10.5 percent in 2019, but that figure mostly reflects cash payments to Americans. After accounting for all the government aid payments, the so-called supplemental poverty measure declined to 9.1 percent in 2020 from 11.8 percent in 2019. The decline in the poverty rate means that millions of Americans were lifted out of severe financial hardship last year, the U.S. Census said. Poverty is defined as having an income of less than $26,200 a year for a family of four." (Also linked yesterday.)
The Pandemic, Ctd.
The Washington Post's live updates of Covid-19 developments Wednesday are here.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Tuesday are here. The Washington Post's live Covid-19 updates for Tuesday are here. (Also linked yesterday.)
Charlie Smart of the New York Times: "Hospitals in the southern United States are running dangerously low on space in intensive care units, as the Delta variant has led to spikes in coronavirus cases not seen since last year's deadly winter wave. One in four hospitals now reports more than 95 percent of I.C.U. beds occupied -- up from one in five last month. Experts say it can become difficult to maintain standards of care for the sickest patients in hospitals where all or nearly all I.C.U. beds are occupied."
New Hampshire. Reid Wilson of the Hill: "A New Hampshire state representative said Tuesday he had formally left the Republican Party in protest of what he said was an emerging strain of anti-vaccination rhetoric coming from state House leaders. State Rep. William Marsh, an ophthalmologist who has won election to four terms in the state House, said he had met with the town clerk of Brookfield to change his registration to affiliate with Democrats. 'I have come to realize a majority of Republicans, both locally and in the NH House, hold values which no longer reflect traditional Republican values...,' Marsh wrote in a press release. He said he had been content to ride out the rest of his term without attracting any attention until state Republican leaders held a rally Tuesday in opposition to President Biden's vaccine mandates for federal and private sector workers." MB: It sure takes a lot for some Republicans to "come to realize" this ain't your father's GOP.
Beyond the Beltway
South Carolina. The Murdaugh Saga, Ctd. Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs of the New York Times: "Alex Murdaugh, the prominent South Carolina lawyer whose wife and son were shot and killed in June, asked a former client to kill him this month so his other son could collect a $10 million insurance payment but survived being shot in the head, the police said on Tuesday night. It was the latest startling twist in a series of mysteries that have brought intense scrutiny to the Murdaugh family and the rural slice of South Carolina where their family has held sway for more than a century, though the central question of who killed Mr. Murdaugh's wife and son remains unsolved. The former client, Curtis Edward Smith, 61, of Walterboro, S.C., was arrested and charged with assisted suicide, aggravated assault and battery, and insurance fraud in connection with the shooting on Sept. 4, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said. The state police agency said that Mr. Murdaugh, 53, had admitted to the scheme on Monday and that Mr. Smith had admitted to being at the scene and getting rid of the gun."
Way Beyond
Jason Horowitz of the New York Times: "Pope Francis on Tuesday rejected in stark terms the use of the cross as a political tool, an apparent swipe at nationalist forces in Europe and beyond that have used the imagery of Christianity for personal gain.... 'The cross is not a flag to wave, but the pure source of a new way of living,' Francis said, adding that a Christian 'views no one as an enemy, but everyone as a brother or sister.'"
Denmark-ish. This Is Horrifying. Let Them Eat Kelp. Rachel Pannett of the Washington Post: "The slaughter of nearly 1,500 dolphins in the remote Faroe Islands has revived a debate about a centuries-old tradition that environmentalists condemn as cruel. The pod of white-sided dolphins was driven into the largest fjord in the North Atlantic territory by hunters in speed boats and on Jet Skis on Sunday, where they were corralled into shallow waters and killed. Many locals defend the hunt as an important local custom, with meat and blubber shared by the local community of the semi-independent Danish territory, which is located halfway between Scotland and Iceland. But the size of this year's hunt -- which conservationists estimate is the largest in Faroese history, and possibly the largest single-day hunt ever worldwide -- may be too much to feed the rocky archipelago's population of around 50,000 people."
Germany. Loveday Morris of the Washington Post: "After a decade and a half, the era of German Chancellor Angela Merkel is coming to an end. Having chosen not to run in national elections this month, she will become the country's first premier to leave power of her own volition. If negotiations to form a new government drag on after the Sept. 26 vote, she could overtake Helmut Kohl as modern Germany's longest-serving leader.... Her admirers have hailed her as everything from the leader of the free world to a contemporary Joan of Arc -- grand portrayals she has always spurned.... President Barack Obama, among her most enduring advocates, described her as an outstanding global political leader. But she leaves a complicated legacy. Some applaud her humble, consensus-driven political style. Others see a lack of bold leadership, particularly in the face of a more aggressive Russia and rising Chinese power. In 2015, she opened the door to more than 1 million refugees, mostly from war-battered Syria. But Merkel's watch has also seen a surge in nationalist sentiment that has propelled the far right into parliament. While dubbed the 'climate chancellor' for her environmental promises, she leaves office with Germany the world's biggest producer of air-choking brown coal." (Also linked yesterday.)
Haiti. Maria Abi-Habib & Anatoly Kurmanaev of the New York Times: "Haiti's chief prosecutor said on Tuesday that there was evidence linking the acting prime minister to the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, and prohibited him from leaving the country until he answers questions about it. Last week, the prosecutor issued a police summons for the prime minister, Ariel Henry, requesting that he testify about contact he had with one of the chief suspects in the killing. Phone records show that Mr. Henry spoke with the suspect -- Joseph Badio, a former intelligence official -- in the hours after Mr. Moïse was killed in July in his home in Port-au-Prince, the capital."
North Korea. Michelle Lee of the Washington Post: "North Korea fired two ballistic missiles off its east coast Wednesday, just two days after it announced a test of a new long-range cruise missile, in what is likely a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The projectiles were identified as short-range ballistic missiles by the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff. If confirmed, it would be the first such test since March. North Korea's back-to-back weapons tests come amid stalled nuclear negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington and puts renewed pressure on the Biden administration's efforts to end North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile program."
News Lede:
New York Times: "Norm Macdonald, the acerbic, sometimes controversial comedian familiar to millions as the 'Weekend Update' anchor on 'Saturday Night Live' from 1994 to 1998, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 61." ~~~
~~~ And do watch Norm tell the story where "a moth walks into a podiatrist's office," which is embedded in the NYT obituary. (It's here, too.) MB: Norm was an original in a genre where almost everything has been done. ~~~
~~~ Remember how Trump often claimed he had invented the term "fake news"? From the Washington Post's obituary of Norm Macdonald: "Mr. Macdonald often introduced 'Weekend Update' by saying, 'Now for the fake news.'... He was one of the first comedians on SNL to joke about Donald Trump, then a publicity-seeking real estate developer in New York. When Trump's second marriage to Marla Maples was breaking up, Mr. Macdonald joked, 'According to Trump, Maples violated part of their marriage agreement when she decided to turn 30.'" Norm's story about meeting Trump during a break in Jimmy Fallon's show seems to be true.
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Reader Comments (14)
Treason.
It is extremely difficult to put together the evidence that would meet the constitutional definitions of treason. The writers drew those definitions with the experience in mind of autocrats and their ministers using "treason" as a charge to suppress and punish any dissent or disrespect to the crown.
So, in the U.S., when you have a traitor, you generally can get a long prison term out of an indictment for many lesser felonies that always accompany treasonable behavior. For people who hold or have held security clearances (as the folks in the story above cefrtainly do/did), a prosecutor can usually get convictions out of violations of the many requirements and prohibitions attendant to the clearance process.
Of course, if you want to make a BIG political splash and you're at the beginning of a Cold War, you can charge a couple of NY Jews with treason and send them to the electric chair. But you almost have to have something like a Red Scare #3 going on to make that work.
For that kind of action, look for the next China spy story. People who make hay out of fearmongering were gearing up the China boogyboogy before 9/11. but went on the backburner when UBL gave them the enemy of their dreams. Now, we move on, and China will start to look, again, like the fearmongerers dream enemy. Not the UAE.
Don't get me wrong -- China is building the capacity to take on the US militarily. The question is, what do we do about that? Building more aircraft carriers (or as the Chinese call them, "targets") and F35s ain't it.
@Patrick: Thanks. I guess, to your point, we don't want to make a big deal about our "friends" in the UAE. Still, I'm appalled that these guys -- and others -- are using insider knowledge gained while working for the U.S. government against the government & American companies. They're not traitors if they've given up their citizenship, but there's no indicating in the story that they have done so.
I do remember the Rosenbergs. I was just learning to read pages of the newspaper that were not the comics when they were executed, and as a child, I was much more startled by their executions than by their crimes, the explanations of which probably used longer words than I could read or understand. I think I've opposed the death penalty ever since then. It seemed barbaric to a child, and well, it still seems barbaric to an old lady.
WHEN NO MEANS YES:
I liked what Newsom had to say afterwards. Now let's see what that interloper will do––he lost but I betcha he will, like Fatty before him, cause all sorts of mischief ––a nice word for battering rams. The amount of money that has been spent on this sorry recall is pathetic!
Re: the conversation between Marie and Patrick: the death of the Rosenbergs shocked me and I remember feeling frightened by it. I don't know whether that influenced by stance on the death penalty but I'm sure it measured in. I also am disturbed by the UAE story–-I would have called it treason or pretty close to it.
ABORTION HAS NEVER JUST BEEN ABOUT ABORTION:
Thomas Edsall takes us through the ways and means of this subject bringing in many voices whose books have taken up the connection between race, religion and power politics. Worth reading!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/opinion/abortion-evangelicals-conservatives.html
Who wins?
War ain’t what it used to be. A shooting war with China, which I’m sure Faux and many R’s would love (always great to kill non-whites who aren’t Christian), would be absolutely nuts. But I seriously doubt either nation (at least those in charge now) want that. China’s truly important war is economic. That, and stealing trade secrets. So much for the tenets of socialism.
But as we’ve just found out, our military was largely ineffective in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Yeah, we blow up a lot of stuff and we have drones and cool tech, but short of staying there forever, we were never going to “win”, especially given the bullshit we were left with after Bush and Cheney worked up their puppet government(s).
The problem is two-fold. There was never a plan in place in either Iraq or Afghanistan for winning the peace. I have no doubt that Afghans could, on their own, have successfully staved off the Taliban if they had had a competent government they were invested in and believed in. Hell, it’s the graveyard of empires. They beat the Romans, the British, and the Russians. But instead of doing the hard work of trying to build something that would last (and maybe that wasn’t even possible, but we never really tried), we propped up greedy pricks who pocketed our money and gave us the finger when our backs were turned.
But just as importantly, we were not prepared to fight an Afghan war. Let’s face it, the last guerrilla war we won was the Revolution. Our military is fine for fighting a WWII type of conflict, but we’re hopelessly flat footed in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, we are now the Redcoats. Remember that old joke about the Americans and British in a football style coin toss? The British lose the call and the captain of the American side calls the terms:
“Okay, we get to wear any color clothes we want, and shoot from behind rocks and trees. Your boys have to wear red and march in a straight line.”
That’s us now. We wear red and march in a straight line. We’re flat footed and loaded down with expensive weapons systems. Know why? Raytheon, Grumman, Lockheed. That’s why. They always win no matter who loses. They don’t give a shit if we win as long as they get their money. And they have plenty of worker bees in Congress to make sure that happens.
Republicans and their Faux media assistants who demand ever larger Pentagon budgets are the first in line to blame it all on Biden when shit gets bad. But no one asks themselves how all those cool high tech systems help us win. And most important of all, they (and we) have never actually clarified what it means to win. What is winning? Killing all the bad guys? Ain’t gonna happen. Never. Bush created a Hydra monster when he went into Iraq with no goals other than waving his dick around. Cut off one head and two more take its place.
Just consider this. How many more radical terrorist and insurgent groups are there today than in 2001? Bush did that.
When Black September killed those athletes at the Olympics in Munich, Israel didn’t start bombing the shit out some country that nothing to do with it (like we did). No. They took it slow. The Mossad sent their guys out and over the course of a few years, got most all of those bastards.
Yeah, it didn’t get them big splashy headlines, but you just know that terrorists in waiting knew about it. And it didn’t create a cottage industry for dozens of new, and more committed terrorist groups. But us? Oh, no. We need aircraft carrier landings and “Mission Accomplished” and Shock and Awe, and live shots of Baghdad hotels blowing up. And Abu Ghraib…next stop, ISIS.
I can’t say what winning really is, but it ain’t what we got goin’ on now. And R’s can whoop it up because the war they started can now all be pinned on Joe Biden.
But at what point do we stop being the Redcoats and stop letting Raytheon call the shots?
“Of course I lie”
TuKKKer KKKarlson
Really, Tuckums? You think this is news? In an interview, he admits to lying if he can’t win an argument on the facts. He sez it’s “weakness”, or something.
So, if he’s faced with facts and can’t get out of the corner he backs himself into, he lies.
Alert the media. Stop the presses. Tuckums is a liar.
Yawn….what else ya got?
https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-i-lie-if-im-really-cornered-or-something-i-lie
The Faroese and killing Flipper: don't it suck when local custom clashes with the outsiders values? Having eaten minke whale in Norway and horse in Kazakhstan and Matte in South America and hot dogs at the ballpark, it is a wide wonderful world. Local customs colliding with the expectations of the outside world. Words do matter, as was discussed in the Margaret Sullivan article the other day. Slaughter is exactly what they did to the dolphins and what happens every single day in meat packing houses. One factory can process 800,000 lbs/day of finished fish minus the head, tail, and viscera. The Faroe islands and surrounding waters produce fish at fish factories. They have freezer capacity, freezer pans, and people who process food every day. When urban people bitch about pretty animals dying, I would note that meat comes from slaughtered animals. It ain't pretty, that's why they put that shit in Iowa and Nebraska. And in the Faroe islands. Don't get me started about "sustainability" driven by Cargill and ADM with corn, soy, and wheat and excess biotech capacity driven by financiers.
Here's a video, about 20 minutes long, about why China won't be the next leader of the world. Long story short, dictators don't always have good ideas and no one around them to tell them when they do.
Alexei Navalny wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian about the need to fight corruption around the world with a few ideas on getting started. "if corruption is preventing us from finding solutions to the problems of the “big agenda”, has the time perhaps come to raise it to a priority on that agenda?" Looking the other way like we did in Afghanistan usually has negative consequences.
Here's a pre-vaccine research quiz people should take versus the what they really do.
RAS,
It's easy to point fingers in other directions (preferably to some other continent), but when we're talking corruption, we habitually look the other way here, too, and in the last forty or fifty years (to denote the rough span of my adult memory) we seem to have grown more comfortable with doing so.
What else was the Pretender's reign but the culmination of decades of corruption that we ignored?
And the stink (the current conservative SCOTUS majority, Republican-run states, the entire R party--and have to say the D's are not immune) lingers...
Ken, I agree that cleaning up the corruption here in the US should be a major priority. Unfortunately the Supreme Court has legalized most corruption. Letting people off even when they are convicted by a jury of their peers. And the money is so entrenched in Congress that it is hard to find enough decent people to stand up and make the changes necessary. The For the People Act legislation proposed by Democrats would help with disclosure requirements, but the big money is fighting back against it also. Navalny points out that a lot of the dirty money is stored in places like the US. Something that has been known for a long time.
The press could help a lot too if they made corruption a big deal. Just this weekend Joe Manchin was on all the sunday shows and he was asked about AOC's criticism of his stances. Unfortunately the explicit idea of corruption never makes it into the conversations even though just a couple of months ago an oil lobbyist was secretly recorded saying that Manchin was specifically targetted to help water down any climate change intitiatives in the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Public pressure would help, but we also need enough brave people in positions of power to make the changes need to weed out all the bad influence and money.
microCOVID Project
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Sorry, @citizen625, Flipper is our friend. Dolphins are among the smartest animals on Earth, second only -- by some estimations -- to orangutans. So are pigs, which is a reason I've cut wa-a-y down on eating pork. I can tell you from personal experience that a pig knows when you're about to slaughter him. It's a sickening feeling for the killer, too. You wouldn't eat a chimp or an elephant, would you? They're also among the smartest. The only animal I've been eating that makes the top-ten lists is the octopus; I didn't know how intelligent they were. I guess I'll have to give up calamari.
Marie, good news, calamari is squid, and they're no Einsteins! Mangiare!
Also, it's sad about the pigs, but reminded me of an actual sick joke from decades ago. I'll shorten it, not like Norm McDonald would.
A man is on a farm and sees a three-legged pig. He asks the farmer "What's with the pig?", and the farmer says "That is the smartest, most talented animal you ever will see. He can't talk, but he can do figures with an abacus; he can play the harmonica; he can snort the entire score to the "Marriage of Figaro", and he can predict the outcome of elections if you show him pictures of the candidates."
So the man says, "Wow, I had no idea. What I was really asking about, though, if why is he missing a hind leg?"
And the farmer says: "A smart pig like that, you don't eat hin all at once!"
@Patrick: Ha ha. You're right about calamari, of course. I'll see if I can get a tub of it at my local supermarket out here in the boondocks. Yum!
The pig story reminds me of an old musician’s joke. A three legged dog and a trombone player pass each other on the street. What’s the difference?
The dog is probably going to a gig.