;)
The Conversation -- September 17, 2023
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times writes about President Biden's staff muzzling him. "Is his less-than-stellar inner circle undermining the boss and giving ammunition to the nasty conservative story line about how the 80-year-old president is losing it?... By publicly treating him as though he's not in control of his faculties, by cutting him off mid-thought as though he's faltering and needs caretaking, they play into the hands of Trumpsters. His vulnerability becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.... Biden needs to start looking like he's in command. His staff is going to have to roll with him and take some risks and stop jerking the reins." (Also linked yesterday.)
Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "Impeachment proceedings were not meant to start with theories. In a world turned upside down, that's what McCarthy has done. The real reason for [Speaker Kevin] McCarthy's decision to launch the inquiry was apparent to all. It was a bow to hard-right members of his conference demanding he do this at a time when the speaker is caught up in internal brawling with those members over funding the government by the Sept. 30 deadline.... By definition, the impeachment process is a political exercise with legal aspects. With this latest turn, it is now almost wholly political, a debasement of what was intended to be a vehicle to remove a president for malfeasance even in the absence of criminal charges.... As pursued by House Republicans, impeachment is now more score-settling than serious undertaking, a tit-for-tat in retaliation for the four criminal indictments of Trump this year and claims of a weaponized Justice Department." ~~~
~~~ Debunked Conspiracy Theory Drives Impeachment Inquiry. Alex Griffing of Mediaite: Jim Jordan, who is one of the fake impeachment leaders, has made clear that the fake basis for impeaching President Biden is nothing more than a long-debunked conspiracy theory that Joe Biden had a Ukrainian prosecutor -- Viktor Shokin -- removed from his job to help out Hunter Biden. "'Joe Biden's actions were consistent with bipartisan US policy, which sought to remove the prosecutor because he wasn't doing enough to crack down on corruption -- including at Burisma,' noted a CNN fact check."
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "Reading ... [Mitt Romney's] surprisingly harsh and unsparing ... [criticism of his fellow Republicans], I wonder how much of it is Romney's sublimated criticism of himself.... Romney ... played a significant role in giving Trump mainstream political credibility.... This was the Romney who ... did a great deal to appeal to the most viciously right-wing figures in his party.... Romney was, not unlike the colleagues he criticizes, willing to say whatever it took to win power, even if it meant smearing nearly half the country as essentially unproductive...." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Bouie doesn't mention it, but it's worth remembering that Romney made his sizeable fortune as a ruthless venture capitalist who specialized in leveraged buyouts & quick sales that maximized the value he could extract from the targeted companies. He's not exactly a model of probity. He did not learn his predatory tendency on his father's knee: George Romney was "a folk hero of the American automotive industry" who as CEO of American Motors would return to the company the part of his annual income he considered excessive.
Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: "Jenna Ellis -- the Donald Trump lawyer who like the former president faces criminal charges regarding attempted election subversion in his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 -- says she will not vote for him in the future because he is a 'malignant narcissist' who cannot admit mistakes.... 'Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he's never done anything wrong.' Ellis, 38, was speaking on her show on American Family Radio, a rightwing evangelical network run by the American Family Association...." MB: Or maybe Ellis's about-face has something to do with the not-surprising fact that Trump won't authorize his PAC to help Ellis with the legal bills she's accruing in defending herself against racketeering charges brought against her in the Trump fake election-fraud conspiracy. (Also linked yesterday.)
A Peculiar State Secret. Alanna Richer & Michael Kunzelman of the AP: Samuel "Lazar, 37, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, was arrested in July 2021 on charges that he came to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, dressed in tactical gear and protective goggles, and used chemical spray on officers who were desperately trying to beat back the angry Donald Trump supporters. There is no public record of a conviction or a sentence in Lazar's court docket. But the Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press that the man was released from federal custody this week after completing a sentence for assaulting or resisting a federal officer. Lazar was sentenced in Washington's federal court on March 17 to 30 months in prison, according to the Bureau of Prisons, but there's no public record of such a hearing. He had been jailed since July 2021.... The Justice Department has refused to say why the case remains under wraps...."
Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "Richard G. Olson Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, was sentenced Friday to three years probation and a $93,350 fine for violating federal lobbying and ethics laws in a case that exposed a secret history of romantic liaisons and glittering gifts during his 34-year career as a diplomat. Olson, 63, who pleaded guilty to two federal misdemeanors related to his consulting work in the Middle East, could have received up to six months behind bars under federal sentencing guidelines. U.S. Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey of D.C. said he didn't think a prison sentence was warranted, but imposed a relatively stiff fine. Federal guidelines had called for Olson to receive a financial penalty of $20,000 or less.... Prosecutors noted in court that he did not apologize for his actions."
Presidential Race 2024. Trump Is So Confused. Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: "... Donald Trump claimed he beat former President Barack Obama -- even though he never ran against Obama -- in a speech in which he attacked President Joe Biden's faculties. Trump delivered a speech to an enthusiastic conservative crowd at the 'Pray, Vote, Stand Summit' in Washington, DC on Friday night, during which he made disparaging remarks about President Biden's 'cognitive' abilities -- while repeatedly committing several gaffes or misspeaking." MB: It's worth reading the excerpt of Trump's zany remarks which Christopher includes in his post. Trump does string together one cogent sentence amid the word salad: "I think we have a lot of words out there." Yes, yes, there are a lot of words out there, Donald, wherever "out there" may be. It's sad that vast collection of words so confounds you.
Neal Boudette of the New York Times: "The United Auto Workers union and the three Detroit automakers on Saturday resumed negotiations on a new labor contract as a targeted strike entered its second day. The union is striking against all three manufacturers -- General Motors, Ford and Stellantis -- but for now has limited the work stoppages to one plant at each of the companies: a Ford plant in Michigan, a G.M. plant in Missouri and a Stellantis plant in Ohio. 'We had reasonably productive conversations with Ford today,' the union said in a statement. It made no mention of its talks with G.M. and Stellantis."
Wenner: Only White Artists Are Intelligent. Ben Sisario of the New York Times: "Jann Wenner, the co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, has been removed from the board of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, which he also helped found, one day after an interview with him was published in The New York Times in which he made comments that were widely criticized as sexist and racist.... The dismissal of Mr. Wenner comes after an interview with The Times, published Friday and timed to the publication of his new book, called 'The Masters,' which collects his decades of interviews with rock legends like Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen and Bono -- all of them white and male. In the interview, David Marchese of The Times asked Mr. Wenner, 77, why the book included no women or people of color. Regarding women, Mr. Wenner said, 'Just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level,' and remarked that Joni Mitchell 'was not a philosopher of rock 'n' roll.... Of Black artists -- you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right?... I suppose when you use a word as broad as "masters," the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn't articulate at that level.'" An AP story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: It isn't clear at all that Wenner understands the implications of the word "master." (Incidentally, he also doesn't seem to know how to use the verb "articulate." I surmise he means "express themselves," but in this meaning, "articulate" is a transitive verb; i.e., it requires a direct object. So the way Wenner uses "articulate," he means "move their arms & legs around." I'd say quite a few Black, female artists are right good at that!) On a substantially more important note, this isn't about one interview or even about one book on the "masters of the popular music universe." It's about what minority and female artists have been up against since the founding of Rolling Stone in 1967. A cool magazine should have helped overcome racist and sexist discrimination in the industry and beyond; instead, I would guess it perpetuated white male hegemony. So now women & minorities still can't get no satisfaction, as Jagger (and Keith Richards) might articulate.
~~~~~~~~~~
Michigan. Tim Craig of the Washington Post: "A Michigan jury acquitted three men on Friday of state charges related to the plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, capping multiple legal proceedings that centered on right-wing extremism and the dangers facing the country's political leaders.... When the verdict was announced, people in the courtroom gasped while the three men cried and hugged supporters, the Associated Press reported. During the trial, state prosecutors had argued that [Eric] Molitor and [twin] ...brothers [William Null & Michael Null] had participated in military-style drills and cased Whitmer's vacation property in Antrim County in northern Michigan.... But attorneys for Molitor, 39, and the Null brothers, 41, argued that the men did not actively take part in the plot and did not consider it to be a serious threat to Whitmer." (Also linked yesterday.)
Pennsylvania. Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs of the New York Times: How a convicted murderer & prison escapee evaded capture for 13 days. (Also linked yesterday.)
** Texas Is Still Texas and Republicans Are Still Republicans. Paxton Acquitted!! Zach Despart of the Texas Tribune: "The Texas Senate on Saturday acquitted Attorney General Ken Paxton of 16 articles of impeachment alleging corruption and bribery, his most artful escape in a career spent courting controversy and skirting consequences of scandal. No article received more than 14 of the required 21 votes to convict. Only two of 19 Republican Senators, Bob Nichols of Jacksonville and Kelly Hancock of North Richland Hills, voted in favor of convicting for any article -- a stark contrast to the nearly 70% of House Republicans who impeached the attorney general in May. The dramatic votes capped a two-week trial where a parade of witnesses, including former senior officials under Paxton, testified that the attorney general had repeatedly abused his office by helping his friend, struggling Austin real estate investor Nate Paul, investigate and harass his enemies, delay foreclosure sales of his properties and obtain confidential records on the police investigating him. In return, House impeachment managers said Paul paid to renovate Paxton's Austin home and helped him carry out and cover up an extramarital affair with a former Senate aide." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ The New York Times ran a liveblog. (Also linked yesterday.)
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Elisabetta Povoledo of the New York Times: "A letter found among the private papers of Pope Pius XII suggests that the Holy See was told in 1942 that up to 6,000 people, 'above all Poles and Jews,' were being killed in furnaces every day at Belzec, a Nazi death camp in Poland. Though news of the atrocities being perpetrated by Hitler was already reaching Pope Pius XII's ears, this information was especially important because it came from a trusted church source based in Germany, said Giovanni Coco, a Vatican archivist who discovered the letter. The source was 'in the heart of the enemy territory,' Mr. Coco said on Saturday.... It is one of the most revealing documents to have emerged since Pope Francis ordered the archives of Pius opened in 2019, saying that 'the church is not afraid of history.' Mr. Coco said he could not be 100 percent sure that Pius saw the letter, but he was '99 percent sure' because it was given to the pope's personal secretary, his 'right-hand man.'"
News Lede
AP: "Atlantic storm Lee made landfall at near-hurricane strength Saturday, bringing destructive winds, rough surf and torrential rains to New England and Maritime Canada. But officials withdrew some warnings for the region late Saturday night. The U.S. National Hurricane Center discontinued a tropical storm warning for the coast of Maine, while Environment Canada ended its tropical storm warning in New Brunswick. One person was killed in Maine on Saturday when a tree limb fell on his vehicle. The post-tropical cyclone also cut power to tens of thousands of customers."
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Reader Comments (13)
Marie: With all the interesting news of the day or decades in the case of da Pope knowing about the gas chambers ( from my readings years ago seems this was already known) what was missing was your sojourn of 25 miles to prove that you were YOU. I'd be interested in what went down during that situation.
@P.D.Pepe: Yes, I meant to write about that yesterday because obviously I'm not in some nice federal pen and Forrest will not have to be baking me a cake with a file or hacksaw inside.
Thursday I collected all my identification for the IRS, back to my birth certificate, as well as several years of tax returns (wouldn't you think they would have these???), and left an hour early for the Friday afternoon appointment lest I get lost or was unable to find parking. Didn't get lost, but parking was problematic.
Anyway, I arrived early, went through the magnetometer -- which took a while as they had to do a full-body search even though I was wearing very little metal (one small gold ring), and got up to the IRS office with plenty of time to overhear that the guy who had an appointment before me had a great excuse for whatever the IRS suspected him of: "I couldn't have done it because I was in prison at the time," sez he.
Excellent! So this really was the place the IRS took on the hard cases. I supposed they didn't want to see hardened criminals like me in the office 20 miles closer to my home because it didn't have sufficient over-the-top security. I thought for sure I'd be needing Forrest's skills.
Then the ex-con leaves, and I get my turn. I lay out all my ID and the IRS lady -- who was very pleasant but of course so was I -- is satisfied that I am who I am. Looks like I've jumped the most serious hurdle: suspected identity theft.
Then she gets to a discrepancy in my tax filing from 2020. While I don't do my own taxes, and there are parts I don't fully understand, this question was an easy one for me to answer because I'd already researched it when I got a query from the IRS about it a couple of years ago and I called them and explained what the problem was. At that time, they said fine, I was right and I didn't owe any more taxes. (In truth, I think the whole kerfuffle was my own fault because I'm guessing I credited an estimated tax payment I made one January to the wrong tax year.) Moreover, I had documented my previous conversation with the IRS with a dated, handwritten note on the query letter I'd received from the IRS way back then, and I showed that to the IRS agent Friday.
In short, the whole hoohah was for nothing, and maybe this won't come up for a third time. But just in case, I urge Forrest to hang onto that file, especially if it's plastic and will make it through a very sensitive magnetometer.
"Tuberville’s promotion block is causing military spouse unemployment, missed school enrollment and deferred retirements, Democrats say
The wife of a Navy officer is stuck in professional limbo, unable to accept a new teaching contract overseas or return to her old job in a Virginia public school.
Two children of service officers are being prevented from enrolling in a new school after leaving their old one in anticipation of a move.
Two Air Force officers are living in temporary housing and paying their own storage costs because they do not know how long their promotions will remain on hold. "
@P.D.Pepe: I agree with you that the Pope's playing footsie with Hitler was previously known. When it came up in a conversation I had once with a friend of my husband's, I mentioned it. She was a devout Roman Catholic lady whose husband Pius XII had made a baron of something holy (no doubt in exchange for significant indulgences), and she said I was totally wrong about Pius. So I dropped the matter, but that doesn't mean I thought I was wrong. Like you, I had read various reports that Pius was silent about the Nazi atrocities even though he knew about them.
Voting is just like driving
@RAS: I'd say a lot more than voting is just like driving. Like, say, poverty, human rights, civil rights, more-or-less non-corrupt government, public education, infrastructure, etc.
Marie: I thank you for a most interesting explanation of your experience at the IRS headquarters. I read this aloud for Joe to hear; and laughed through most of it––-it's really very funny while being exasperating at the same time. I put myself in your shoes and cringed at having to accomplish this feat. Once young and up for anything this complicated, I am no longer in that category and I applaud your handling of it––––good show!!!!!
@Marie: I know from experience that metal inside the body doesn't
register on a magnetometer. When I had a broken bone above an
ankle, it had two metal screws and a steel plate until it healed.
That was before a flight to Italy and I was really worried, but nothing
came of it.
Soooo, you could do your sword-swallowing act, but with a hacksaw
blade or a metal file.
But if you're absolutely sure you've been cleared by the IRS, then
don't lose sleep over it.
The last time I had to prove that I was who I said I was, was about
10 years ago when renewing my driver's license in person. The lady
said don't come in here with that birth certificate ever again. It's
worn out and totally unreadable. I said to her that if she was as old
as that birth certificate and had been handled as much, she'd be worn
out too.
Fortunately the manager was president of our garden club and told
her to get on with it. It pays to have friends in high places (sometimes).
Reading DiJiT's disjointed delivery linked above, I didn't understand his use of the word "doubles":
"... Because I don’t like using names on people doubles. I think we have a lot of words out there. So I took now I call her Beautiful Hillary’s a beautiful woman. And rather than Sleepy Joe, we call him Crooked Joe because it’s a very appropriate name. ..."
Maybe I'm getting slow, but it took me a while to realize that he's saying that he doesn't like to use the same nickname for more than one enemy, so if he uses "crooked" for President B, he has to change HRC's nickname from "Crooked Hillary" to something else. He's also telling us that he tried other names for The President, but none fit as well as "crooked," so he had to change it.
What an incoherent yutz.
More Pretender interviews, Truth Social posts and random remarks dissected, the faux Biden impeachment, Noem's exhibition of her version of family values, what Paxon's acquittal really means to Texas and the GOP, the certain drip of additional filings in the manifold Pretender court cases...
But the drama I will be watching over the next two weeks will be the manner in which McCarthy's House deals with the spending bills it would rather not touch...
They matter.
All other is mostly irrelevant noise.
@Patrick: I had no idea what Trump meant by "people doubles." I think you figured it out, which was darned clever of you. If you heard a "normal" English speaker mention "people doubles," I guess you'd think s/he meant "body doubles" or stand-ins or impersonators, not "using the same pejorative adjective to describe two people."
I hate to say it, but you seem like a exceeding well-qualified Trump explainer.
As Trump says, there are a lot of words out there, but I hate to tell him that it is you, not he, who has the best words.
To translate DiJiT, first you have to realize that his brain lets go of a thought-fart before his mouth can finish expressing it, so you get run-ons and overlaps, dupes and skips.
Like a broken printer.
And another thing: Trump is still boasting about "acing" a simple screening test meant to detect cognitive impairment. He told Kristen Welker of NBC News just this past week, "I took a test two years ago, three years ago. And as the doctors said -- and it was in front of doctors and a whole big deal at Walter Reed, which is an incredible place. And I aced it. I get everything right."
After he took the test, probably in 2018 (so not two or three years ago), he couldn't stop boasting about passing it. ABC News reported on July 23, 2020, "For at least the third time this month, President Donald Trump has bragged about the results of a cognitive test he took as part of a physical exam in 2018 but now says he took 'less than a year ago.'
“'Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV,' Trump said in recalling one of the memory-related questions on the test in an interview with Dr. Marc Siegel, a physician and Fox News contributor, that aired Wednesday.
'And then 10 minutes, 15, 20 minutes later, they say, remember the first question, not the first, but the 10th question? Give us that again. Can you do that again? And you go, "Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV,”' he said....
“'It's not that easy. There were other questions tougher than what I just did. But it's not that easy,' Trump [said]....
“I got a perfect mark. And the doctors were -- they said: Very few people can do that. Very few people get that...,' Trump told Siegel.
“'I aced the test,' the president said in another interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity earlier this month....
"'I took it at Walter Reed Medical Center in front of doctors. And they were very surprised. They said, that’s an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you just did...,' Trump said."
Well, okay, it is an "unbelievable thing." As Akhilleus pointed out last week, Trump's descriptions of the test and his answers are almost certainly not true: "Real cognition tests typically don’t use words as closely connected as 'person, man, woman' and 'camera, TV'. Someone slipped him the EZ test. Cognition tests typically include words that have no connection to one another, like mountain, orange, butterfly, sneaker, top hat. The words are stated only once then asked to be recalled after about 20 minutes."