The Commentariat -- December 30, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Annie Grayer & Ryan Nobles of CNN: "Sen. Bernie Sanders is in 'good health,' nearly three months after suffering a heart attack, the attending physician at the US Capitol said in a letter released Monday. The physician, Brian Monahan, said in a summary of the Vermont senator's health that Sanders is no longer taking several of the medications initially prescribed to him after the heart attack."

Elisha Fieldstadt of NBC News: "Prosecutors on Monday filed federal hate crime charges against the 37-year-old man accused of storming a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi's home in Monsey, New York, with a machete and wounding five people.... Authorities ... discovered handwritten journals in [the suspect's] home that contained anti-Semitic writings. On one page, he had drawn a Star of David and a Swastika, and written about 'Nazi culture' and 'Adolf Hitler,' according to a federal criminal complaint filed Monday."

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post: Mitch "McConnell badly needs the media's both-sidesing instincts to hold firm against the brute facts of the situation. If Republicans bear the brunt of media pressure to explain why they don't want to hear from witnesses, that risks highlighting their true rationale: They adamantly fear new revelations precisely because they know Trump is guilty -- and that this corrupt scheme is almost certainly much worse than we can currently surmise. That possibility is underscored by the Times report [linked below], a chronology of Trump's decision to withhold aid to a vulnerable ally under assault while he and his henchmen extorted Ukraine into carrying out his corrupt designs. The report demonstrates in striking detail that inside the administration, the consternation over the legality and propriety of the aid freeze -- and confusion over Trump's true motives -- ran much deeper than previously known, implicating top Cabinet officials.... We now have a much clearer glimpse into the murky depths of just how much more these officials know about the scheme -- and just how much McConnell and Trump are determined to make sure we don't ever learn."

Mac Bishop, et al., of NBC News: "Trump's attempt to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden has ... exposed the cracks in the West's response to an emboldened Russia, inflicted permanent damage on Ukraine and heightened the risk of Moscow extending its influence in the country, according to democracy advocates and military experts."

Jesse Drucker & Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "The overhaul of the federal tax law in 2017 was the signature legislative achievement of Donald J. Trump's presidency. The biggest change to the tax code in three decades, the law slashed taxes for big companies.... But big companies wanted more -- and, not long after the bill became law in December 2017, the Trump administration began transforming the tax package into a greater windfall for the world's largest corporations and their shareholders.... The process of writing the rules [that determine how laws are executed], conducted largely out of public view, can determine who wins and who loses. Starting in early 2018, senior officials in President Trump's Treasury Department were swarmed by lobbyists seeking to insulate companies from the few parts of the tax law that would have required them to pay more.... Thanks in part to the chaotic manner in which the bill was rushed through Congress -- a situation that gave the Treasury Department extra latitude to interpret a law that was, by all accounts, sloppily written -- the corporate lobbying campaign was a resounding success."

Two Girls Chatting. Mehdi Hasan of the Intercept: "... [Margaret] Brennan's interview with Ivanka [Trump] -- which was ... pegged to the new policy of paid parental leave for federal government workers -- could be considered a low point in 'Face the Nation''s storied 65-year history.... To quote liberal writer Eric Boehlert, 'for most Sunday shows, the blueprint remains the same: book a Republican and let them talk.' When Brennan asked Ivanka to address the cruel and callous policy of family separation at the border and the '900 children who remain separated from their families,' the senior adviser to the president dodged the question, claiming 'immigration is not part of my portfolio,' before quickly changing the subject to human trafficking. Yet there was no follow-up, no pushback whatsoever, from the 'Face the Nation' host."

Julian Barnes of the New York Times: "The United States military on Sunday struck five targets in Iraq and Syria controlled by an Iranian-backed paramilitary group, the Pentagon said, a reprisal for a rocket attack on Friday that killed an American contractor." (This is an update & an expansion of a Reuters story linked below.)

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** Eric Lipton, et al., of the New York Times: "Interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials, congressional aides and others, previously undisclosed emails and documents, and a close reading of thousands of pages of impeachment testimony provide the most complete account yet of the 84 days from when Mr. Trump first inquired about the money to his decision in September to relent. What emerges is the story of how Mr. Trump's demands sent shock waves through the White House and the Pentagon, created deep rifts within the senior ranks of his administration, left key aides like [Mick] Mulvaney under intensifying scrutiny -- and ended only after Mr. Trump learned of a damning whistle-blower report and came under pressure from influential Republican lawmakers.... Opposition to the order from his top national security advisers was more intense than previously known. In late August, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper joined Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser at the time, for a previously undisclosed Oval Office meeting with the president where they tried but failed to convince him that releasing the aid was in interests of the United States.... Mr. Mulvaney is shown to have been deeply involved as a key conduit for transmitting Mr. Trump's demands for the freeze across the administration."

Erin Banco & Asawin Suebsaeng of the Daily Beast: "In the weeks leading up to their impeachment trial, senators on Capitol Hill are actively avoiding meeting with ... Rudy Giuliani -- partly because they fear he might try to pass off Russian conspiracy theories as fact, according to interviews with more than half a dozen Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides.... When he arrived back in Washington [after a trip to Kiev last month], Giuliani updated Trump, according to two individuals with knowledge of their conversation, and said publicly the president asked him to brief Republican senators about the information he gathered.... Both Democrat and Republican senators have steered clear of the president's personal attorney over concern that the information he is trying to disseminate originated from figures in Ukraine known for spinning the truth or spreading outright lies.... 'My advice to Giuliani would be to share what he got from Ukraine with the IC [intelligence community] to make sure it's not Russia propaganda...,' [Lindsey Graham said]."

"A Hand Grenade Who's Going to Blow Everybody Up." Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "... Rudolph W. Giuliani and then-Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) ... were part of a shadow diplomatic effort, backed in part by private interests, aimed at engineering a negotiated exit to ease [Venezuela's] President Nicolás Maduro from power and reopen resource-rich Venezuela to business, according to people familiar with the endeavor...' provid[ing] another example of how Giuliani used his private role to insert himself into foreign diplomacy, alarming administration officials confused about whose interests he was representing.... Giuliani's willingness to talk with Maduro in late 2018 flew in the face of the official policy of the White House, which, under national security adviser John Bolton, was then ratcheting up sanctions and taking a harder line against the Venezuelan government. Around the time of the phone call, Giuliani met with Bolton to discuss the off-the-books plan to ease Maduro from office -- a plan Bolton vehemently rejected, two people familiar with the meeting said." Of course Lev Parnas, (allegedly) crooked Venezuelan businessmen -- at least one of whom is Giuliani's client -- & the Grand Havana Room cigar bar in Manhattan figure in. Because these are Trump people. Slate has a summary report here.

Justine Coleman of the Hill: Sen. "Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) questioned whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will 'try to rig' the impeachment trial by teaming up with President Trump. Van Hollen told Jon Karl on ABCs 'This Week' that Senate Democrats are pushing for a 'fair trial' where they are permitted to call witnesses and obtain necessary documents.... 'We keep hearing President Trump say he's going to be exonerated,' he added. 'Look, if you have a rigged trial there's no exoneration in acquittal.'"

Ah, Those "New York Values" Are the Problem. Melissa Quinn of CBS News: "Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma criticized President Trump for his tweets and language, saying he doesn't believe the president is someone who young people can look up to. 'I don't think that President Trump as a person is a role model for a lot of different youth. That's just me personally,' Lankford said on 'Face the Nation.' 'I don't like the way that he tweets, some of the things that he says, his word choices at times are not my word choices. He comes across with more New York City swagger than I do from the Midwest and definitely not the way that I'm raising my kids.'" Mrs. McC: Thanks for your insights, Jim. Blaming NYC "swagger" for Trump's behavior is lame under any circumstance, and under the circumstance that most New Yorkers despise Trump makes your argument ridiculous. (In Manhattan, Clinton beat Trump 86%-10% in 2016; of the five boroughs, only on Staten Island did Trump top Clinton.) Trump doesn't talk like a New Yorker; he talks like a mobster.

Reuters: "Russia said it had thwarted terror attacks reportedly planned in St Petersburg as the result of a tip from Washington, as President Vladimir Putin personally thanked his US counterpart Donald Trump. Russian news agencies cited the Federal Security Service (FSB) as saying that as a result of the information, two Russians had been detained on 27 December on suspicion of plotting attacks during new year festivities in St Petersburg." ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Andrew Kramer of the New York Times: "... on Sunday, the Kremlin statement said Mr. Putin had ... thanked Mr. Trump for 'information transmitted through the channels of U.S. special services.' It said the two leaders had also discussed other 'issues of mutual interest,' but did not spell them out. The White House did not respond to a request for comment."

In Keeping with Family Tradition, Ivanka Lies, Takes Credit for Legislation She Didn't Back. James Downie of the Washington Post: "Disgracefully, the United States remains one of just three countries in the world without statutory paid maternity leave. This month finally saw some small progress toward fixing this injustice when Trump's father signed a defense-spending bill that instituted 12 weeks of paid parental leave for government workers. From her CBS interview, in which [Ivanka] Trump touted '2½ years of building our coalitions of support for this policy,' you'd think this was the result of years of Trump's hard work. The truth is rather different. According to The Post, it's her father's opponents whom government workers have to thank for the new benefits: In negotiations over the defense bill, House Democrats used President Trump's desire for a Space Force to extract funding for the new paid leave policy.... The paid family leave bills that Ivanka Trump has supported don't look like the straightforward 12 week guarantee in the defense bill. In the Brennan interview, Trump touted a bill advanced by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). Rather than paid leave, the Cassidy-Sinema bill would offer families a loan of up to $5,000 to cover time off, and which would be repaid by cuts to the families' child tax credits.... [But] the new parental leave benefits for government employees closely resemble those in the FAMILY Act, proposed by Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), which would provide all workers with 12 weeks of paid leave. Yet in her interview with [CBS's Margaret] Brennan, Trump dismissed the FAMILY Act as 'stale.'" Since she didn't prevaricate quite enough about family leave legislation, she also lied about how family leave was instituted at her own company -- she fought it. ~~~

~~~ David of Crooks & Liars: "... Ivanka Trump declined to criticize her father's administration over its family separation policy for immigrants. In a highly publicized interview that aired on Sunday, CBS host Margaret Brennan asked Trump about the family separations policy in light of her concern for all children. '... Homeland Security says there's still around 900 children who remain separated from their families,' Brennan told Trump. 'Is that something that you continue to remain engaged on?' 'Well, immigration is not in part of my portfolio,' Trump replied. 'Obviously, I think everyone should be engaged and the full force of the U.S. government is committed to this effort of border security, to protecting the most vulnerable.'" She went on to talk about human trafficking, which was not part of the question. Then Brennan said, "Ivanka Trump, thank you very much." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Great suck-up interview, Maggie; thanks for not asking any embarrassing follow-up questions like, "Whaddaya mean, 'not in my portfolio'? You're a mother, for Pete's sake. Look at you, you're getting someone to iron your damned hair while your father & his henchmen are ripping babies from their mothers' arms. And your response is 'not in my portfolio? Get out!" Please, get me a good producer & researcher & I'll show Brennan & Chuck Todd how to interview politicians.

Bonus. Especially if you are a snob (count me in!), but even if you're not, you may enjoy David Roth's "Unified Theory of the Trumps' Creepy Aesthetic" (Dec. 19) in the New Republic.

Ahmed Rashid, et al., of Reuters: "A top Iraqi militia leader warned of a strong response against U.S. forces in Iraq following air strikes in Iraq and Syria overnight that hit several bases of his Iranian-backed group and killed at least 25 people. The U.S. military carried out air strikes on Sunday against the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia group in response to the killing of a U.S. civilian contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base, officials said."

Presidential Race 2020

David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "Our process for selecting presidential nominees is badly flawed.... It has come to resemble a reality television show, in which a pseudo-scientific process (polls plus donor numbers) winnows the field. The winner is then chosen by a distorted series of primaries and caucuses: The same few states always get outsize influence, and a crude, unranked voting system can produce a nominee whom most people don't want.... When voters are given the dominant role in choosing a nominee -- as with primaries here -- only an unrepresentative subset tends to participate, which skews the process." Leonhardt has some limp suggestions to improve it.... The seven candidates who made the last Democratic debate stage all have their strengths, but as a group, they offer an indictment of the nomination process. There are three candidates in their 70s -- and no African-American or Latino. There are two people who have never won an election -- and zero who have ever run a state. Of course, the biggest sign that the process is broken isn't any of those seven. It is the man in the Oval Office."

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "... Michael R. Bloomberg is ... spending millions each week in an online advertising onslaught [attacking Donald Trump] that is guided by polling and data that he and his advisers believe provide unique insight into the president's vulnerabilities. The effort, which is targeting seven battleground states where polls show Mr. Trump is likely to be competitive in November, is just one piece of an advertising campaign that is unrivaled in scope and scale. On Facebook and Google alone, where Mr. Bloomberg is most focused on attacking the president, he has spent $18 million on ads over the last month.... That is on top of the $128 million the Bloomberg campaign has spent on television ads.... Those amounts dwarf the ad budgets of his rivals, and he is spending at a faster clip than past presidential campaigns as well. Mr. Bloomberg is also already spending more than the Trump campaign each week to reach voters online.... In swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that are likely to decide whether Mr. Trump gets re-elected, the president's campaign and its allies have already been advertising on his behalf for more than a year. Mr. Bloomberg's campaign is focusing its efforts there, hoping to erode Mr. Trump's standing."~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Bloomberg is not likely to be the Democrats' nominee, but he seems to be helping the candidate who will be.

Marisa Iati of the Washington Post: "Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon known for promoting voting rights, announced Sunday that doctors diagnosed him with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, which typically has a poor prognosis. Lewis (D-Ga.), who has served in Congress since 1987, said he planned to return to Washington soon to continue working and to undergo treatment over the next several weeks. He said he might miss some votes during that time." A Hill report is here.

"The Decade from Hell": New Republic Writers Condemn the Past Decade:

Alex Shephard: "The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, which [Jon Stewart] hosted [in October 2010] with his then-Comedy Central colleague Stephen Colbert, was an attempt to shame a media industry addicted to theatrical conflict and shallow analysis. It was also meant to showcase common ground typically lacking in political coverage.... The rally was a huge success: 200,000 people crowded the Mall in Washington, D.C.... But it hasn't aged well. Stewart's call for Americans to transcend party lines and concentrate on their shared aspirations is embarrassing to watch in 2019.... It serves as a milestone in recent political history: a nadir in the left's years-long refusal to reckon with the extremist right."

Nick Martin: "Three days after Stewart and Colbert's rally and their call for a return to normalcy, midterm elections were held across the country. Most headlines and politics-watchers focused on the dramatic Republican gains in the House of Representatives. But the results that would most profoundly shape American politics came not at the national level, but in the state houses and senates, the chambers where state budgets are set and national policies and political movements start their journeys."

Alex Pareene: "The story of American politics over the past decade is that of a [Democratic] party on the cusp of enduring power and world-historical social reform, and how these once imaginable outcomes were methodically squandered.""

Ganesh Sitaraman: "With the 2008 financial crash and the Great Recession, the ideology of neoliberalism lost its force. The approach to politics, global trade, and social philosophy that defined an era led not to never-ending prosperity but utter disaster. 'Laissez-faire is finished,' declared French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan admitted in testimony before Congress that his ideology was flawed. In an extraordinary statement, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd declared that the crash 'called into question the prevailing neoliberal economic orthodoxy of the past 30 years -- the orthodoxy that has underpinned the national and global regulatory frameworks that have so spectacularly failed to prevent the economic mayhem which has been visited upon us.'"

Libby Watson: "The last decade's misadventures in health care reform -- the fight to pass the ACA; the unhinged response of its opponents; the efforts, successful and unsuccessful, to undermine the law; and the rapid, unprecedented rise of a movement to replace it with something far bigger and more radical --— holds a clear lesson for the future. Passing a bill crafted with industry approval and based on ideas originated with the Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romney -- and then insisting that it's the most progressive thing since the New Deal and we should all be grateful for it -- set the party up for the single-payer movement that's happening now. If only this had been its intention."

Otherwise, things went very well.

News Lede

AP: "A man pulled out a shotgun at a Texas church service and fired on worshippers Sunday, killing two people before he was shot to death by congregants who fired back, police said. Authorities at a Sunday evening news conference praised the two congregants who opened fire as part of a volunteer security team at West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement. It was unclear if the two people who were killed were the two who shot at the gunman."

The Commentariat -- December 29, 2019

Jan Wolfe of Reuters: "... Joe Biden on Saturday said there would be 'no legal basis' for Republicans to subpoena his testimony in ... Donald Trump's impeachment trial, clarifying remarks from Friday that drew criticism. 'I want to clarify something I said yesterday. In my 40 years in public life, I have always complied with a lawful order and in my eight years as VP, my office -- unlike Donald Trump and Mike Pence -- cooperated with legitimate congressional oversight requests,' Biden said on Twitter. 'But I am just not going to pretend that there is any legal basis for Republican subpoenas for my testimony in the impeachment trial,' Biden added. The statement came one day after Biden said in an interview with the Des Moines Register that he would not comply with a Senate subpoena because it would be a tactic by Trump to distract from the president's wrongdoing. Some legal experts and commentators had criticized Biden for his remarks to the Iowa newspaper, noting that the White House's refusal to comply with congressional subpoenas was part of the reason why Trump had been impeached." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Just to clarify, Biden is not "clarifying" his earlier remarks. "Clarifying" is elaborating on or rephrasing a statement that was confusing or could be misunderstood. Biden's original remark was pretty damned comprehensible: one of the interviewers asked, "Do you stand by your original statement that you wouldn't comply if you were subpoenaed to testify in an impeachment trial before the Senate?" Biden answered "Correct," then went on to say why he would not comply. (See video on the linked page.) He's taking that back, not clarifying the meaning of "correct." ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times gets it right: "Joseph R. Biden Jr. backtracked on Saturday from his stated position that he would not comply with a subpoena to testify in President Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate. Instead, he declared that he would abide by 'any subpoena that was sent to me' even as he insisted there was no justification for calling him as a witness. A day after reaffirming that he would not comply with a subpoena, Mr. Biden tried twice on Saturday to clarify his remarks, asserting that there would be no 'legal basis' for such a subpoena but left it unclear, for much of the day, if he would ultimately comply with one. Then, questioned by a voter about the issue of compliance with subpoenas, Mr. Biden answered unequivocally. 'I would obey any subpoena that was sent to me,' he said at a town hall-style event in Fairfield[, Iowa]. Mr. Biden's 180-degree turn on whether he would comply with a subpoena was one of the starkest and swiftest reversals by a candidate in the Democratic primary campaign, and came after he faced questions and criticism about whether his initial stand would run counter to the rule of law." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: This mini-brouhaha demonstrates anew Biden's remarkable inability to field the inevitable questions about Ukraine. Of course, he would still be a far better president* than Trump, who blatantly lies about his "perfect" phone call, whines about persecution, & personally attacks those who call him out for abusing his office.

David Frum of the Atlantic: "... in the early hours of Friday morning, December 27, Trump retweeted a supporter who named the presumed whistleblower in the text of the tweet. This is a step the president has been building toward for some time.... Lawyers debate whether the naming of the federal whistleblower is in itself illegal. Federal law forbids inspectors general to disclose the names of whistleblowers, but the law isn't explicit about disclosure by anybody else in government. What the law does forbid is retaliation against a whistleblower. And a coordinated campaign of vilification by the president's allies -- and the president himself -- surely amounts to' retaliation' by any reasonable understanding.... Trump is organizing from the White House a conspiracy to revenge himself on the person who first alerted the country that Trump was extorting Ukraine to help his re-election: more lawbreaking to punish the revelation of past law-breaking.... He is a president with the mind of a gangster, and as long as he is in office, he will head a gangster White House." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Colby Itkowitz of the Washington Post: "By Saturday morning, Trump's retweet had been deleted.... Federal laws offer only limited protection for those in the intelligence community who report wrongdoing, and those in the intelligence community have even fewer protections than their counterparts in other agencies. The 1998 Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act did not detail any protections for whistleblowers from retaliation -- instead merely describing the process to make a complaint.... In the days after Christmas, Trump retweeted more than a dozen posts from users affiliated with QAnon, the conspiracy theory that there is a 'deep state' secretly plotting to take down Trump. The FBI has identified QAnon as a potential domestic terrorism threat." ~~~

     ~~~ Brian Stelter of CNN: "Other [Trump] retweets were also reversed, including pro-Trump and anti-Democrat memes from suspicious-looking Twitter accounts. But his whistleblower-related post was the most noteworthy because nearly every public official involved in the impeachment inquiry agreed that the identity of the original complainant should be protected.... Some of the accounts [Trump retweeted] show signs of being run by spam operations, but others appear to be genuine, passionate Trump supporters....Ultimately, what the President's tweetstorm reveals -- in unflattering detail -- is his sketchy sources of information. Twitter spokesman Nick Pacilio confirmed to CNN Saturday afternoon that the platform has suspended some of the pro-Trump accounts that Trump had promoted Friday night....He also retweeted people calling Democrats 'rats' and videos claiming to prove 'collusion between DNC & Ukraine during 2016 Presidential campaign.' There has been no evidence of collusion between the Democratic National Committee and Ukraine in the last election. Vox's Aaron Rupar ... wrote on Twitter Friday night, 'The President of the United States has, today alone, retweeted 2 QAnon fan accounts, a Pizzagate account, an account that compared his following to a cult, and an account that described [President] Obama as "Satan's Muslim Scum."'" ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: As a reminder to the understandably benumbed: a real president would not retweet any of this crapola.

Greg Robb of MarketWatch: "... Donald Trump's strategy to use import tariffs to protect and boost U.S. manufacturers backfired and led to job losses and higher prices, according to a Federal Reserve study released this week.... While the tariffs did reduce competition for some industries in the domestic U.S. market, this was more than offset by the effects of rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs, the study found." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Deborah Pearlstein in the Atlantic: "In his efforts to mask the seriousness of his actions around Russia and Ukraine..., Donald Trump has taken aim at one essential democratic institution after another -- questioning the legitimacy of the press, the intelligence community, the courts, and, most recently, the House of Representatives itself. But he has so far mostly held his fire against both 'his generals' and 'our boys' in America's military.... The military's generally steadying reactions to the president's worst moments of volatility have given members of Congress on both sides of the aisle reason to hope that the Pentagon at least will remain a check on presidential impulse that might really compromise national security, should other checking institutions fail. But hoping that a president will defer to the judgment of the professional military is a sign that something has gone very wrong in America's constitutional infrastructure." Read on. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Vanity Cameo. About That "Home Alone 2" Trump Cameo that the CBC Cut. Theresa Braine of the New York Daily News: In the clip, "Trump directs [Macauley] Culkin's character to a pay phone in the Plaza Hotel, which the not-yet-president owned at the time.... In truth, the scene was never meant to be part of [the film]. Trump routinely mandates that in return for filming at one of his properties, he has to be in a scene, according to many in the movie industry. 'The deal was that if you wanted to shoot in one of his buildings, you had to write him in a part,' Matt Damon told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. '[Director] Martin Brest had to write something in "Scent of a Woman" -- and the whole crew was in on it. You have to waste an hour of your day with a bulls--t shot: Donald Trump walks in and Al Pacino's like, "Hello, Mr. Trump!" -- you had to call him by name -- and then he exits. You waste a little time so that you can get the permit, and then you can cut the scene out. But I guess in "Home Alone 2" they left it in.'" (Also linked yesterday.)

** Science v. Sharpie. Facts Are Their Enemies. Brad Plumer & Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "In just three years, the Trump administration has diminished the role of science in federal policymaking while halting or disrupting research projects nationwide, marking a transformation of the federal government whose effects, experts say, could reverberate for years. Political appointees have shut down government studies, reduced the influence of scientists over regulatory decisions and in some cases pressured researchers not to speak publicly. The administration has particularly challenged scientific findings related to the environment and public health opposed by industries such as oil drilling and coal mining. It has also impeded research around human-caused climate change, which President Trump has dismissed despite a global scientific consensus."

Senate Race 2020. Bruce Schreiner of the AP: "Calling her party's victory in the Kentucky governor's race a jolt of momentum for her own bid to unseat a Republican incumbent, Democrat Amy McGrath on Friday officially filed to challenge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in what looms as a bruising, big-spending campaign next year.McGrath, a retired Marine combat pilot, touted many of the same issues -- health care and good-paying jobs -- that Andy Beshear highlighted in ousting Republican incumbent Matt Bevin in last month's election for governor.... McGrath became the latest in a crowded field of candidates from both parties to file for McConnell's seat. McGrath, who lost a hotly contested congressional race last year, has shown her mettle as a fundraiser, raking in nearly $11 million in her first few months as a Senate candidate, giving her a huge advantage over other Democratic candidates. McConnell has his own bulging campaign fund." (Also linked yesterday.)

Lisa Pane of the AP: "A database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University shows that there were more mass killings in 2019 than any year dating back to at least the 1970s, punctuated by a chilling succession of deadly rampages during the summer. In all, there were 41 mass killings, defined as when four or more people are killed excluding the perpetrator. Of those, 33 were mass shootings. More than 210 people were killed."

AFP (Dec. 27): "The United Nations on Friday approved a Russian-led bid that aims to create a new convention on cybercrime, alarming rights groups and Western powers that fear a bid to restrict online freedom. The General Assembly approved the resolution sponsored by Russia and backed by China, which would set up a committee of international experts in 2020.... The United States, European powers and rights groups fear that the language is code for legitimizing crackdowns on expression, with numerous countries defining criticism of the government as 'criminal.'... Human Rights Watch called the UN resolution's list of sponsors 'a rogue's gallery of some of the earth's most repressive governments.'"

Danielle Paquette of the Washington Post: "What started as an anniversary promotion called the Year of Return -- a government-funded call for the African diaspora to explore Ghana four centuries after the first slave ship reached Virginian soil -- has enticed some Americans to stay for good. Officials in this West African nation of roughly 29 million people say interest has overwhelmed the tourism office as the annual flood of visitors has more than doubled and A-list celebrities spark frenzies around the capital.... The rush to Ghana, where millions of Africans were forced into servitude before the slave trade ended in 1870, intensified after [derogatory] tweets from President Trump." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: I hope I'm wrong, but this does not sound like a story with a happy ending. Paquette cites two visitors: one, an American used-car salesman who has moved to Ghana to "explore business opportunities," and two, a rapper who stayed in a $12,000-a-night hotel in a country where the average annual income is just over $2,000. Sounds less like a development program than an exploitation program.

News Lede

New York Times: "An intruder with a large knife burst into the home of a Hasidic rabbi in a New York suburb [Rockland County] on Saturday, stabbing and wounding five people just as they were gathering to light candles for Hanukkah, officials and a witness said.... Police officials announced around midnight that a suspect had been caught.... The attack came after a surge in anti-Semitic violence in the New York region. On Friday, the police in New York City stepped up patrols in three Brooklyn neighborhoods after what officials called an 'alarming' increase in incidents." A CBS New York story is here.

The Commentariat -- December 28, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Greg Robb of MarketWatch: "... Donald Trump's strategy to use import tariffs to protect and boost U.S. manufacturers backfired and led to job losses and higher prices, according to a Federal Reserve study released this week.... While the tariffs did reduce competition for some industries in the domestic U.S. market, this was more than offset by the effects of rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs, the study found."

Deborah Pearlstein in the Atlantic: "In his efforts to mask the seriousness of his actions around Russia and Ukraine..., Donald Trump has taken aim at one essential democratic institution after another -- questioning the legitimacy of the press, the intelligence community, the courts, and, most recently, the House of Representatives itself. But he has so far mostly held his fire against both 'his generals' and 'our boys' in America's military.... The military's generally steadying reactions to the president's worst moments of volatility have given members of Congress on both sides of the aisle reason to hope that the Pentagon at least will remain a check on presidential impulse that might really compromise national security, should other checking institutions fail. But hoping that a president will defer to the judgment of the professional military is a sign that something has gone very wrong in America's constitutional infrastructure." Read on.

Vanity Cameo. About That "Home Alone 2" Trump Cameo that the CBC Cut. Theresa Braine of the New York Daily News: In the clip, "Trump directs [Macauley] Culkin's character to a pay phone in the Plaza Hotel, which the not-yet-president owned at the time.... In truth, the scene was never meant to be part of [the film]. Trump routinely mandates that in return for filming at one of his properties, he has to be in a scene, according to many in the movie industry. 'The deal was that if you wanted to shoot in one of his buildings, you had to write him in a part,' Matt Damon told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. '[Director] Martin Brest had to write something in "Scent of a Woman" -- and the whole crew was in on it. You have to waste an hour of your day with a bulls--t shot: Donald Trump walks in and Al Pacino's like, "Hello, Mr. Trump!" -- you had to call him by name -- and then he exits. You waste a little time so that you can get the permit, and then you can cut the scene out. But I guess in "Home Alone 2" they left it in.'"

David Frum of the Atlantic: "... in the early hours of Friday morning, December 27, Trump retweeted a supporter who named the presumed whistleblower in the text of the tweet. This is a step the president has been building toward for some time.... Lawyers debate whether the naming of the federal whistleblower is in itself illegal. Federal law forbids inspectors general to disclose the names of whistleblowers, but the law isn't explicit about disclosure by anybody else in government. What the law does forbid is retaliation against a whistleblower. And a coordinated campaign of vilification by the president's allies -- and the president himself -- surely amounts to' retaliation' by any reasonable understanding.... Trump is organizing from the White House a conspiracy to revenge himself on the person who first alerted the country that Trump was extorting Ukraine to help his re-election: more lawbreaking to punish the revelation of past law-breaking.... He is a president with the mind of a gangster, and as long as he is in office, he will head a gangster White House."

Senate Race 2020. Bruce Schreiner of the AP: "Calling her party's victory in the Kentucky governor's race a jolt of momentum for her own bid to unseat a Republican incumbent, Democrat Amy McGrath on Friday officially filed to challenge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in what looms as a bruising, big-spending campaign next year.McGrath, a retired Marine combat pilot, touted many of the same issues -- health care and good-paying jobs -- that Andy Beshear highlighted in ousting Republican incumbent Matt Bevin in last month's election for governor.... McGrath became the latest in a crowded field of candidates from both parties to file for McConnell's seat. McGrath, who lost a hotly contested congressional race last year, has shown her mettle as a fundraiser, raking in nearly $11 million in her first few months as a Senate candidate, giving her a huge advantage over other Democratic candidates. McConnell has his own bulging campaign fund."

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Nick Coltrain of the Des Moines Register: "Former Vice President Joe Biden confirmed Friday he would not comply with a subpoena to testify in a Senate trial of ... Donald Trump.... Biden said in early December he wouldn't comply with a subpoena by the Senate, and confirmed that statement Friday in an interview with the Des Moines Register's editorial board. He has not been subpoenaed, but Trump's allies have floated the idea. Testifying before the Senate on the matter would take attention away from Trump and the allegations against him, Biden said. Not even 'that thug' Rudy Giuliani ... has accused Biden of doing anything but his job, the former vice president said. Biden also said any attempt to subpoena him would be on 'specious' grounds, and he predicted it wouldn't come to that."

Steve Benen of MSNBC (Dec. 26): "For nearly three years, Donald Trump has ignored his own country's intelligence community and believed that Ukraine intervened in the U.S. elections in 2016 in the hopes of undermining his candidacy.... A Washington Post report last week ... [claimed] Trump's embrace of the falsehood appears to have come directly from Russian President Vladimir Putin." But when a reporter asked Trump, "... what did President Putin say to you that convinced you that the Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election?" Trump evaded answering. His eventual response, Benen points out, had "Abbott-and-Costello-like qualities": "You're putting words in somebody's mouth. Who are you referring to? Me? I never said anything about it. I never said a thing about it. All right, any other questions?" Benen: "The connections between Trump's conversations with his Russian benefactor and his willingness to promote Ukraine conspiracy theories are well documented, and they reinforce concerns about the American president serving as Putin's puppet."

Melissa Lemieux of Newsweek: During a panel discussion [about the Senate impeachment trial] on CNN, Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer who worked under George W. Bush..., said, 'For Mitch McConnell to say he's working with the White House, coordinating with the defendant in this trial before the trial has even begun is atrocious. He may think he's a judge impaneling an all-white jury for a Klansman trial in Mississippi in 1965. That's not the kind of trial we have.'..."

Caitlin Oprysko of Politico (Dec. 26): "... Donald Trump on Thursday issued a warning to allies of the Syrian government waging a military offensive to regain rebel-held territory that relief groups say has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians since last month. 'Russia, Syria, and Iran are killing, or on their way to killing, thousands of innocent civilians in Idlib Province,' he tweeted. 'Don't do it! Turkey is working hard to stop this carnage.' According to The Associated Press, Syrian government forces allied with Russia and Iran have been shelling parts of Syria's Idlib province since late last month in an attempt to retake one of the last strongholds of the U.S.-allied rebels. The unrest has sent more than 216,000 civilians fleeing from their homes, relief group Syrian Response Coordination Group told the AP."

** Eric Levitz of New York: "Throughout the ... decades, [Donald Trump has] expressed an ecumenical respect for governments that privilege their own power above the rule of law.... By the same token, nothing offends the president's moral sensibilities (such as they are) than those who place adherence to the law above loyalty to their superiors. Trump has forgiven many of his appointees' trespasses. But Jeff Sessions's decision to recuse himself from the Justice Department's investigation of the Trump campaign -- and thus, privilege his profession's code of ethics above his president's legal interests -- was simply beyond the pale.... In pardoning [Edward] Gallagher, Trump did not put support for the troops above fidelity to the Geneva Convention, but rather, support for a war criminal above respect for the law-abiding service members he tormented.... The war criminal is Trumpism's perfect patriot; the whistle-blower, it's quintessential villain.... That the U.S. president venerates lawlessness in the pursuit (or maintenance) of power is alarming; that the party he leads increasingly shares that ideal is even more so." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Levitz, like others, argues that the one thing Trump "believes in" is power, and since he has this one "belief," Trump is not a nihilist. Levitz describes Trump's one "belief" as "power for a cause," but the "cause" Levitz uses as an example -- the Chinese putting down the Tiananmen Square revolt -- really is nothing but the maintenance of power itself. A "belief" in brute force, IMO, is no belief at all. It is an expression of nihilism.

Edward Wong & Catie Edmondson of the New York Times: "In a rare show of bipartisan unity, Republicans and Democrats are planning to try to force President Trump to take a more active stand on human rights in China, preparing veto-proof legislation that would punish top Chinese officials for detaining more than one million Muslims in internment camps. effort comes amid growing congressional frustration with Mr. Trump's unwillingness to challenge China over human rights abuses, despite vivid news reports this year outlining atrocities, or to confront such issues globally. To press Mr. Trump into action on China, lawmakers plan to move ahead with legislation that would punish Beijing for its repression of ethnic Uighur Muslims, with enough supporters to compel the president to sign or risk being overruled by Congress ahead of the 2020 election. A version of the legislation, known as the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act, passed both the House and Senate this year, but its path to the White House was stalled this month by a procedural process."

Adam Raymond of New York: "The world's richest people had a good year in 2019, increasing their wealth by a staggering 25 percent. A new analysis of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index found that the 500 richest people on the planet increased their vast wealth by $1.2 trillion in the past year, bringing their total wealth to $5.9 trillion."

Earth. The Apocalypse Is Now. Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "On land, Australia's rising heat is 'apocalyptic.' In the ocean, it's worse.... Over recent decades, the rate of ocean warming off Tasmania, Australia's southernmost state and a gateway to the South Pole, has climbed to nearly four times the global average, oceanographers say. More than 95 percent of the giant kelp -- a living high-rise of 30-foot stalks that served as a habitat for some of the rarest marine creatures in the world -- died.... Nearly a tenth of the planet has already warmed 2 degrees Celsius since the late 19th century, and the abrupt rise in temperature related to human activity has transformed parts of the Earth in radical ways." ~~~

~~~ OR Apocalypse Soon. Michiko Kakutani, in a long New York Times op-ed: "Apocalypse is not yet upon our world as the 2010s draw to an end, but there are portents of disorder. The hopes nourished during the opening years of the decade -- hopes that America was on a progressive path toward growing equality and freedom, hopes that technology held answers to some of our most pressing problems -- have given way, with what feels like head-swiveling speed, to a dark and divisive new era. Fear and distrust are ascendant now. At home, hate-crime violence reached a 16-year high in 2018, the F.B.I. reported. Abroad, there were big geopolitical shifts. With the rise of nationalist movements and a backlash against globalization on both sides of the Atlantic, the liberal post-World War II order -- based on economic integration and international institutions -- began to unravel, and since 2017, the United States has not only abdicated its role as a stabilizing leader on the global stage, but is also sowing unpredictability and chaos abroad.... Many of these troubling developments didn't happen overnight. Even today's poisonous political partisanship has been brewing for decades -- dating back at least to Newt Gingrich's insurgency -- but President Trump has blown any idea of 'normal' to smithereens, brazenly trampling constitutional rules, America's founding ideals and virtually every norm of common decency and civil discourse."

Claudia Lauer & Meghan Hoyer of the AP: "Victims advocates had long criticized the Roman Catholic Church for not making public the names of [priests] credibly accused [of child sex abuse]. Now, despite the dioceses' release of nearly 5,300 names, most in the last two years, critics say the lists are far from complete. An AP analysis found more than 900 clergy members accused of child sexual abuse who were missing from lists released by the dioceses and religious orders where they served." Mrs. McC: It is not clear from the report, but in context it seems that the list refers only to clergy members in diocese within the U.S.

Beyond the Beltway

North Carolina. Travis Fain of WRAL Raleigh: "A federal judge said late Thursday that she will, at least temporarily, block North Carolina from requiring photo identification from voters at the polls next year. An order explaining the decision and its full breadth will come next week, but this week's announcement was timed to delay a planned statewide mailing explaining the state's new voter ID rules. Public notice came via a short note appended to an online case file Thursday in NAACP et al v. Cooper, one of at least two ongoing lawsuits challenging voter ID in the state."

Way Beyond

Mexico. Elisabeth Malkin of the New York Times: "The police chief of a small town near Mexico's border with the United States has been arrested on suspicion that he was involved in the massacre of nine women and children of a Mormon family last month, the Mexican authorities said Friday. The federal authorities arrested Fidel Alejandro Villegas, the police chief in the town of Janos in the state of Chihuahua, as part of their investigation into the Nov. 4 attack in a remote region in neighboring state of Sonora."