Wednesday
Dec262018
The Commentariat -- Dec. 27, 2018
Late Morning Update:
Steve Benen on Trump's remarks to troops serving in Iraq yesterday: "About halfway through his remarks..., he told servicemen and women: 'I don't know if you folks are aware of what's happening. We want to have strong borders in the United States. The Democrats don't want to let us have strong borders -- only for one reason. You know why? Because I want it.... You know, when you think about it, you're fighting for borders in other countries, and they don't want to fight -- the Democrats -- for the border of our country. It doesn't make a lot of sense....We have secured a record increase to our military budget, and we are purchasing all of this great equipment -- $700 billion last year; $716 billion -- with a "b," with a "b." We were fought very hard by the Democrats and others. But I said, "We have to take care of our military.'" The factual errors obviously matter -- there was no big partisan fight over military equipment, for example -- but of greater concern are the errors of judgment.... The sitting president traveled halfway around the world, arrived on foreign soil, and slandered his American political opponents back home in front of active-duty troops serving abroad. And while I realize Trump often benefits from low expectations, it's tough to make the argument that these antics are OK."
Peter Stone & Greg Gordon of McClatchy DC: "A mobile phone traced to ... Donald Trump's former lawyer and 'fixer' Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials, four people with knowledge of the matter say. During the same period of late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague, two people familiar with the incident said. The phone and surveillance data, which have not previously been disclosed, lend new credence to a key part of a former British spy's dossier of Kremlin intelligence describing purported coordination between Trump's campaign and Russia's election meddling operation...Both of the newly surfaced foreign electronic intelligence intercepts were shared with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, [the] people ... said." --s
*****
Cadet Bone Spurs Goes to Iraq. Annie Karni, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump visited American military forces in Iraq on Wednesday, a surprise trip and the first visit to troops stationed abroad in a combat zone by a commander in chief who has made withdrawing the United States from foreign wars a signature issue. The trip, shrouded in secrecy, came in the midst of a partial government shutdown and less than a week after Mr. Trump disrupted America's military status quo and infuriated even some of his staunchest political allies by announcing plans to withdraw all troops from Syria and about half of those stationed in Afghanistan. The president's decision on Syria, made over the objections of American military generals and civilian advisers, led to the resignation of Mr. Trump's defense secretary, Jim Mattis, and fueled tensions within the national security establishment. The place Mr. Trump chose to visit is the one theater of war where he has not promised a rapid drawdown of forces -- and it is where he claims his greatest military victory, the defeat of the Islamic State in Mosul, the Iraqi city where the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the beginning of its self-proclaimed caliphate. The assault on Mosul by Iraqi forces, backed by Americans, began under President Barack Obama but culminated in the summer of 2017 under Mr. Trump." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Melanie visited Iraq with her husband, and the casual jacket she wore had no odd message scrawled on the back. But being with her husband, she must have been pretty sure he would screw things up without any help from her. And he didn't let her down. Trump's brief trip to Iraq & remarks were just another in the countless episodes in which we shake our heads and say, "If any other president had done this, it would have been news for weeks & Congress would investigate, etc. Instead, the media are giving Trump credit for finally making a minimal effort to do what is part of his Constitutional job description. ...
... Cadet Bone Spurs Carelessly Outs Navy Seals Serving in Iraq. James Laporta of Newsweek: "... Donald Trump and the White House communications team revealed that a U.S. Navy SEAL team was deployed to Iraq after the president secretly traveled to the region to meet with American forces.... While the commander-in-chief can declassify information, usually the presence of a special operations unit, to include, showing their faces would not be revealed to the American public, especially while the U.S. service members were still deployed. Current and former Defense Department officials told Newsweek that the information is almost always classified and is a violation of operational security.... After Trump left Iraqi airspace, the president posted a video to his Twitter account ... [that] shows the president and the first lady posing for pictures with service members that appear to be from SEAL Team Five. The special warfare operators are dressed in full battle gear and wearing night vision goggles. The video cuts to team members shaking the president's hand.... The president's video did not blur the faces of special operation forces. 'I don't recall another time where special operation forces had to pose with their faces visible while serving in a war zone,' [a] Pentagon official said." ...
... Matt Stieb of New York: "Of course, this isn't Trump's first failure in operational security. In October, the New York Times reported that when Trump calls friends on his personal iPhone -- a device he was supposed to ditch for security measures -- Russian and Chinese spies eavesdrop to gauge the president's mood and who might have his ear on policy matters.... [And] last year, Trump left his cell behind in a golf cart at his course in New Jersey, causing 'a scramble' to find it. Nor is it Trump's first impromptu revelation of national security interests: in April 2017 phone call, Trump told Rodrigo Duterte, the authoritarian president of the Philippines, that the U.S. had sent two nuclear submarines to the waters off the coast of North Korea. And, in May 2017, hours after the dismissal of James Comey, Trump revealed Israeli intelligence assets to the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, jeopardizing the Israeli-American intelligence link and leaving Mossad 'boiling mad and demanding answers.'" ...
... THEN, of course, there was Trump's usual inability to rise to any occasion, turning what should have been remarks to honor men & women in service into a political speech honoring himself & dissing his predecessors & "our" generals. Lying all the while, of course:
... Ali Rogin of ABC News: "... Donald Trump struck overtly political chords as he addressed service members during a speech at the al-Asad Airbase in Iraq Wednesday -- his first visit to an overseas military installation. Abandoning, as he has before, the traditional maxim of politics ending at the water's edge, the president said his military strategy puts an end to the United States being 'suckers' and hammered Democrats for resisting his demands for border wall funding. The president appeared to lie to the assembled soldiers about their pay raise this year and re-enacted a conversation with his military advisers who he claimed had encouraged him not to remove American troops from Syria.... 'Is anybody here willing to give up the big pay raise you just got?' he surveyed the crowd. 'Raise your hand please. Oh, I don't see too many hands.' He continued, citing numbers that have since been debunked.... 'You haven't gotten [a raise] in more than ten years,' he said. 'And we got you a big one. I got you a big one.'... Trump also reenacted conversations he said he had had with 'our generals' over U.S. presence in Syria, [implying he had been exceptionally tolerant of their incompetence but he finally put his foot down and said, 'Now we're going a different way.']" ...
... THEN Trump indicated he was confused about the existence of ISIS. Brian Bennett of Time: "Trump's visit was colored by his unexpected and controversial decision last week to pull all 2,200 troops from neighboring Syria within 30 days. In announcing the order, Trump declared victory in the war against ISIS, or Islamic State.... Many of the service members stationed at Al Asad Air Base currently battling ISIS in the region will likely face additional challenges in the fight against the terrorist organization as a result of Trump's unilateral order.... Trump suggested [to reporters] that regional U.S. allies, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, would take up the fight against 'remnants of ISIS' in the U.S.'s absence from Syria, describing the ongoing civil war and humanitarian crisis as a regional problem. 'We are in their region,' he said of other Middle Eastern nations. 'They should be sharing the burden of costs and they're not.'... 'In Syria, Erdogan said he wants to knock out ISIS, whatever's left, the remnants of ISIS,' Trump said." ...
... He even encouraged the troops to get in trouble: ...
... Eli Watkins of CNN: "... Donald Trump made his first visit to a war zone on Wednesday, receiving an enthusiastic reception from many US troops there -- some of whom may have run afoul of military rules. Video footage and the written report of Trump's visit with service members in Iraq showed the President signing 'Make America Great Again' hats and an embroidered patch that read 'Trump 2020.' But troops' requests for the autographs could brush up against Department of Defense guidelines for political activities. Those guidelines say that 'active duty personnel may not engage in partisan political activities and all military personnel should avoid the inference that their political activities imply or appear to imply DoD sponsorship, approval, or endorsement of a political candidate, campaign, or cause.'" --s ...
... ALSO too, the trip was arduous and scary. Tamara Keith of NPR: "Trump was asked whether he had any concerns about the circumstances of the trip. He said this, according to the pool report: 'I had concerns about the institution of the presidency. Not for myself personally. I had concerns for the first lady, I will tell you. But if you would have seen what we had to go through in the darkened plane with all the windows closed with no light anywhere ... pitch-black.... So did I have a concern? Yes, I had a concern." Mrs. McC: Not even a night light & blanky. I have been watching a Netflix fictional series about the presidency, which featured a similar AF1 lights-out as the plane entered a combat zone. Apparently that's SOP. It did not cause the fictional president to freak out. ...
... AND Iraqi leaders are irate. Ahmed Rasheed, et al., of Reuters: "Iraqi political and militia leaders condemned ... Donald Trump's surprise visit to U.S. troops in Iraq on Wednesday as a violation of Iraq's sovereignty, and lawmakers said a meeting between Trump and Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi was canceled due to a disagreement over venue." ...
... Other than that, everything went very smoothly. ...
... Cadet Bone Spurs, Ctd. Paul Waldman in the Washington Post: "I suppose it's theoretically possible that there is someone in America who believes that Donald Trump avoided service in Vietnam through perfectly legitimate means, and his 'bone spurs' both existed and were so debilitating that the self-described star athlete could not have endured marches through the jungle on his tender heels. But really: We all understand that like so many young men at the time, Trump didn't want to go, and so he did what he could to get out of it.... One can't help but notice the sharp contrast with the experience of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both of whom also took steps to avoid going to Vietnam. In their presidential campaigns, those efforts were huge controversies, to which large numbers of journalists were assigned to investigate and write stories.... Another question is why Trump's draft avoidance didn't bother conservatives, especially when you combined it with the evident contempt he displayed for actual military service...." ...
... digby: "Of course, his father got him out of the draft. Of COURSE he did. After all, his father got him out of every jam he ever got into for the next 30 years. And the list of jams is endless. It is the story of his life[.]... I don't hold it against people for not wanting to go, of course. It was a terrible war. People like Bill Clinton didn't have the money to buy off doctors but he worked the system furiously for years to get out of it, including calling on powerful local friends to help him out. But the rich kids like Trump and George W. Bush just had their daddies write a check or make a call even as they and their friends all supported the war.... Trump is even doing it today, going after Senator Richard Blumenthal who did join the military and made the mistake of calling himself a Vietnam vet instead of a Vietnam era vet.... Trump's voters, who spent their lives waving the flag and railing against anyone who didn't serve are now completely tolerant of their cult leader's privileged refusal to join." ...
... AND digby sounds a ringing note of caution on Trump's "isolationism": "I wouldn't be too impressed with his abrupt withdrawal of troops from Syria and Afghanistan either. Keep in mind that those wars were begun under other presidents and his fundamental foreign policy, from the Paris accords to Russian sanctions to NAFTA is to simply reverse everything his predecessors did. That's all he knows. If he wants to start a new war, all his own, he will do it without a second thought."
Laura Kayali of Politico: "The President of the United States is the 'worst' perpetrator of misinformation on the internet, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion David Kaye said in an interview published today." --s
John Bresnahan & Rachel Bade of Politico: "The partial government shutdown entered its fifth day Wednesday with no signs of a breakthrough and hundreds of thousands of federal workers about to feel the pinch of a protracted standoff.... Donald Trump and Democratic congressional leaders aren't currently negotiating directly, according to GOP and Democratic aides. Staff-level discussions are continuing, but there's no indication that key players are ready to reach an accord. 'Whatever it takes. We need a wall,' Trump told reporters on Wednesday during a su[r]prise visit to U.S. troops in Iraq. 'We need safety for our country.... We have terrorists coming in through the southern border.'... There is no evidence terrorists are entering the United States via the southern border with Mexico.... [Mrs. McC: So yet another lie to the troops.] Trump on Christmas suggested that federal employees welcomed his fight for the wall.... Some 'said to me and communicated, "Stay out until you get the funding for the wall,"' Trump claimed.... But multiple unions representing federal workers have pushed back on that notion. The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents a swath of highly-skilled government workers, said in a statement that 'if the president wants to gamble, perhaps he should go back to running casinos.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I expect Trump's claim about federal workers is true. Remember that his staff & Cabinet members are "federal workers." And you can bet that if he asked them, they indeed said, "Fight for Great Wall, Dear Leader."
Trump Causes Shutdown, Then Uses It to Try to Delay Lawsuit Against Him. Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Lawyers for ... Donald Trump are invoking the government shutdown to seek a delay in a court case over claims that Trump is illegally profiting from business his Washington hotel does with foreign countries. Justice Department attorneys representing Trump asked a federal appeals court on Wednesday to postpone indefinitely all further filings in an appeal related to a suit that the governments of Maryland and Washington, D.C., filed over Trump's alleged violation of the Constitution's ban on foreign emoluments." Mrs. McC: Kinda like the guy who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy on accounta his being an orphan.
Eric Lipton, et al., of the New York Times: "In just two years, President Trump has unleashed a regulatory rollback, lobbied for and cheered on by industry, with little parallel in the past half-century.... The trade-offs, while often out of public view, are real -- frighteningly so, for some people -- imperiling progress in cleaning up the air we breathe and the water we drink, and in some cases upending the very relationship with the environment around us. Since Mr. Trump took office, his approach on the environment has been to neutralize the most rigorous Obama-era restrictions, nearly 80 of which have been blocked, delayed or targeted for repeal, according to an analysis of data by The New York Times. With this running start, Mr. Trump is already on track to leave an indelible mark on the American landscape, even with a decline in some major pollutants from the ever-shrinking coal industry." This is really four stories, each focusing on an environment hazard Trump & the boys have instigated.
Garrett Ross of Politico: "... Donald Trump dug in his heels Wednesday as the partial government shutdown drags on, telling reporters during a trip to Iraq that he would do "whatever it takes" to get a wall at the border with Mexico. 'Whatever it takes. We need a wall,' Trump said in response to questions about when the government would reopen, according to a pool report. 'We need safety for our country.'" ...
<... Niraj Chokshi of the New York Times: "The Department of Homeland Security said it has completed new medical screenings of almost all the children in its care, with a focus on those under the age of 10, after a second migrant child died in Customs and Border Protection custody. The agency announced the move on Tuesday night, less than a day after the death of an 8-year-old boy from Guatemala.... In addition to the medical checks, Customs and Border Protection said that it was reviewing its policies regarding children in its custody and exploring ways to 'relieve capacity' in New Mexico and part of Texas. Those options include supervised release and working with nonprofit groups to place children in temporary housing." ...
... Scott Bixby of the Daily Beast: "In the wake of a second child's death while in Border Patrol Patrol custody, a top House Democrat said on Wednesday that Congress will hold hearings 'to ask serious questions about what happened and who bears responsibility.' The announcement by Rep. Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat who is on deck to serve as House Majority Leader, came as the Department of Homeland Security placed blame for the tragedies on lawmakers, cartels and immigration advocates.... In a Wednesday morning telephone briefing, Department of Homeland Security officials said the latest death is under investigation." ...
... Ian Kullgren & David Beavers of Politico: "Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen sought to deflect blame Wednesday for the Christmas Eve death of an 8-year-old Guatemalan boy in the custody of U.S. Border Patrol agents, blaming 'a system that prevents parents who bring their children on a dangerous and illegal journey from facing consequences for their actions.'... '"Smugglers, traffickers, and their own parents put these minors at risk by embarking on the dangerous and arduous journey north.'" ...
... ** Spencer Ackerman & Adam Rawnsley of The Daily Beast: "A Daily Beast investigation found that in 2018 alone, for-profit immigration detention was a nearly $1 billion industry underwritten by taxpayers and beset by problems that include suicide, minimal oversight, and what immigration advocates say uncomfortably resembles slave labor.... Expanding the number of immigrants rounded up into jails isn't just policy; it's big business.... [T]he private prisons giant GEO Group, expects its earnings to grow to $2.3 billion this year. Like other private prison companies, it made large donations to President Trump's campaign and inaugural.... For 19 privately owned or operated detention centers for which The Daily Beast could find recent pricing data, ICE paid an estimated $807 million in fiscal year 2018. Those 19 prisons hold 18,000 people -- meaning that for-profit prisons currently lock up about 41 percent of the 44,000 people detained by ICE. But that's not a comprehensive total, and the true figures are likely significantly higher." --s
Josh Kovensky of TPM: "Acting Attorney General and former hot tub salesman Matthew Whitaker claimed he earned 'All-American' academic honors during his University of Iowa football days on his resume and on government applications, but there's no record of it being true, the Wall Street Journal found. Whitaker claimed to have achieved the status of 'Academic All-American' while he was a tight end at the University of Iowa in the early 1990s. The College Sports Information Directors of America told the Journal it had no record of bestowing the honor, which requires a 3.3 GPA, on Whitaker. Whitaker claimed to have been awarded the honor in a 2010 application for an Iowa judgeship and in a resume sent to the patent marketing firm that he twisted arms for." ...
... Rafi Schwartz of Splinter goes into more detail on Whitaker's silly resume inflation and concludes, "This leaves us with two possibilities. One is that Whitaker simply did not understand that he was multiple steps away from actually getting the honor he repeatedly bragged that he'd received. If this is the case, the man currently serving as the nation's top legal official is at best easily confused by multi-tier organizational structure, and at worst, just hopelessly dumb. The second option, and frankly more believable one, is that Whitaker knew the wasn't actually an academic All-American, and lied about it anyway.... [He did] a lot of high profile bragging about what is essentially a 20-year-old embellishment that doesn't really matter at all.... Maybe it's the idealist in me, but if you're the sort of person who's gonna stumble ass backwards into the Attorney General's office, I'd hope you could be a little less used-car-salesmen and a little more Lex Luthor when it comes to your grift. I'm not mad -- I'm just disappointed." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Frankly, I think Whitaker is the perfect mini-Trump. Trump has repeatedly engaged in multi-million-dollar grifts, while Whitaker's grifts have been comparatively small potatoes (though you might not feel that way if you were one of Whitaker's marks). Phonies often inflate their college resumes. Trump has done that, too. Again and again. The main difference between them is that Trump was born with a silver-plated foot in his mouth. But he swears it was sterling.
"Profiles in Courage," Ctd. Nicole Lafond of TPM: "Outgoing Republican Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) on Wednesday warned of the dangers of accepting the term 'fake news' and suggested that Trump's presidency could eventually lead to the emergence of a 'Hitler-like character.' 'I want to be clear and explicit that I am not likening Trump to Hitler, but the forces at play could lead to a future Hitler-like character if we don't watch out,' he wrote on Facebook in a farewell statement." --s
Scott Shane of the New York Times: "Reid Hoffman, the tech billionaire whose money was spent on Russian-style social media deception in a Senate race last year, apologized on Wednesday, saying in a statement that he had not approved the operation and did not support such tactics in American politics. Mr. Hoffman said he had no idea that political operatives whose work he had financed had used fakery on Facebook and Twitter in the special Senate election a year ago in Alabama. But he had an obligation to track how his money was spent, he said, and he promised to exercise more care in the future.... He said he had financed 'organizations trying to re-establish civic, truth-focused discourse' and was 'embarrassed' to learn his money had been spent on disinformation. The New York Times and The Washington Post reported last week that $100,000 from Mr. Hoffman was spent on a deceptive social media campaign to aid Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate, who barely defeated the Republican, Roy Moore."
Emily Flitter of the New York Times: "Stocks broke their losing streak on Wednesday, posting their biggest single day of gains since 2009, as sales data showed spending by American consumers remains healthy and Russia signaled that it was willing to help keep oil prices higher. Investors were also reassured by a White House official's statement that Jerome H. Powell's job as Federal Reserve chairman was '100 percent' safe. The S & P 500 index rose 5 percent. The gains brought the index back from the brink of a bear market -- a decline of 20 percent from its peak -- though 2018 remains on track to be the benchmark's worst year since the global financial crisis a decade ago. The market's rally was broad." Mrs. McC: Besides, Trump is out of the country. What crazy thing could he possibly do to tank the markets? ...
... Thomas Heath of the Washington Post: "The Dow Jones industrial average roared 1,086 points, or 4.98 percent -- its biggest point gain in history -- as stocks snapped a four-day losing streak that had placed the 10-year bull market on the edge of death Monday."
The Daily Beast: "MSNBC ended the week of Dec. 21st with the No. 1 cable-news ratings on television, beating Fox News for the first time in 17 years.... It was also the fourth week in a row that MSNBC beat Fox News in the 8-11 p.m. prime-time hours in both total viewers and the 25-54 news demo. The Rachel Maddow Show was the most-watched cable news program of the week, with more than 3.2 million total viewers (compared to about 2.3 million for Sean Hannity). The victory comes amid a coordinated advertiser boycott of Tucker Carlson's prime-time Fox News show after the host claimed immigrants make America 'dirtier.'" --s
For those of you who read the New York Times' comments:
Margalit Fox of the New York Times:
Larry Eisenberg, whom we well know,
Has died (and his age is below).
He opined on the news
With limericks, whose
Delightfulness leavens our woe.
"Dr. Eisenberg, who died on Tuesday at 99, was for more than a decade one of the most prolific contributors of reader comments on nytimes.com -- and, by extension, on the internet as a whole. But what distinguished him even more than his prodigious output (more than 13,000 comments since 2008) was the form those comments took: verse -- mostly limericks -- perfectly rhymed, (usually) metrically impeccable and always germane to whatever recent news item had caught his eye. His daughter, Beth Eisenberg, announced the death. She said the cause was complications of acute myeloid leukemia. Dr. Eisenberg's verse made him a cult figure in the lively, atomized, fiercely opinionated parallel universe of The New York Times's online commenters. As Andrew Rosenthal, then the editorial page editor of The Times, wrote in 2012, Dr. Eisenberg was 'the closest thing this paper has to a poet in residence.'"
Beyond the Beltway
Tamar Hallerman & Greg Bluestein of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "State senator and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Michael Williams turned himself into Hall County jail Wednesday, days after news broke that he had been indicted on charges that included insurance fraud. Williams' attorney, A.J. Richman, said he negotiated bond with the district attorney and that his client will be 'out soon.'... The charges against the Forsyth County Republican, who will likely remain in office until mid-January, stem from a May incident in which Williams reported his Gainesville campaign office was burglarized. At the time, Williams' campaign manager said $300,000 worth of computer servers that were being used to mine cryptocurrency had been taken from the building. Williams is accused of lying to a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent when he said he was at home in Forsyth County, not in the Gainesville area at the time of the purported burglary. The indictment, which doesn't say what allegedly actually happened to the servers, accuses Williams of making a false insurance claim related to the servers.... Williams came in fifth place out of five candidates in the Republican gubernatorial primary in May. He waged a controversial campaign that featured several attention-grabbing stunts, his final being a 'deportation bus.' He frequently highlighted his status as the first state official to endorse Donald Trump for president...."
News Lede
New York Times: "The final miles of a nearly two-month race across Antarctica -- a lonely effort marked by long days, short nights and stunning endurance -- ended Wednesday with a sprint to the finish. In what could go down as one of the great feats in polar history, the American Colin O'Brady, 33, covered the final 77.54 miles of the 921-mile journey across Antarctica in one final sleepless, 32-hour burst, becoming the first person ever to traverse Antarctica from coast to coast solo, unsupported and unaided by wind. O'Brady's transcontinental feat, which took him an actual total of 932 miles with some zigzags along the course, was remarkable enough; but to complete the final 77.54 miles in one shot -- essentially tacking an ultramarathon onto the 53rd day of an already unprecedented journey -- set an even higher bar for anyone who tries to surpass it."
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Reader Comments (14)
One of the Times' occasional commenters wrote on Dr. Eisenberg's death:
"So now I know.
It was the same Larry Eisenberg, the Times limericist and that occasional sf writer I remember from years ago. His verse always put me in mind of Isaac Asimov, and I often wondered if they had been acquainted. Whether they knew one another or not, the association was apparently not mistaken.
Delivered a eulogy the other week for someone whose passing, as that of most, will never be noted by the Times, and used the occasion to remark on the the many uncounted and unaccountable ways in which we affect one another during our limited time on the earth.
Mr. Eisenberg's circle was far wider than most, I know, but the same applies to us all. We all leave something of ourselves behind when we go. Among much else, Mr. Eisenberg provided a lot of pleasure and left a lot of friends.
As one of those fortunate enough to have been included in his wide circle over the years, I'm grateful to have had the privilege."
Ken Winkes
The RC relevance?
As I wrote I thought of the relatively small circle (tho' it numbers in the millions) of people that reads and produces writing in areas of that interest me. Over my life, two of those areas have been politics/history and literature/sf. Hence my acquaintance with the extended family of the NY Times and Mr. Eisenberg (and RC, of course), and as I reflected on those connections, I marveled again, that as geographically dispersed as that circle is, how often people of like minds and interests continue to run into one another, sometimes repeatedly, even without Facebook or Twitter.
It's one of life's blessings.
Always enjoyed Dr. Eisenberg's very clever limericks and now finding out he was 99 is quite a surprise––there's hope for us all. How wonderful that the NYT's honored him.
And Ken–-yes, the connections we make –-surely one of life's blessings. It reminds me of something Edna O'Brien said about books:
"Books are the Grail for what is deepest, more mysterious and least expressible within ourselves. They are the soul's skeleton. If we were to forget that, it would prefigure how false and feelingless we could become."
Reading again how Mr. Spurious Spurs on de footsies fucked up his trip to Iraq took me back again to Dr. Strangelove–-in a tweeter tweet this madman could put us all in peril. Interesting how old this film is but here we are with a similar cast of characters only it ain't fiction–-it's real. Once more I ask the question: Is there no one that preps this dunce as to protocol?
The second immigrant death of a child begs more intense investigation into what is now ONE of the worst scandals of the Trump administration. By next week the newly minted House will embark and all these scandals will get a white wash just like that literary fence, unlike Trump's fake wall-in-fence not in progress.
Fatty's latest sad attempt at lying
his way to being able to waste almost $6 billion dollars of taxpayers' money is a claim (unsupported, natch) that "...most of those people not getting paid [in the Trump-Republican shutdown of the government] are Democrats".
First, I'm pretty sure (at least to my knowledge) that party affiliation is not part of any government worker's personnel file. So how does Orange Fatty know this?
Moreover, such a claim suggests that most government workers must then be Democrats, unless Republicans are all working in areas of the government he has not shut down, (eg, Defense, which was already funded) making this closure even more of a rancid partisan wreck than it already is.
Obviously, there's no way Fatso could know the party affiliation of government employees and whether most of those affected are Democrats, Republicans, Whigs, or Tories, or Anarcho-Syndicalists.
There is this, however: "In a recent survey conducted by Government Business Council, the research arm of Government Executive Media Group, 44 percent of respondents identified as Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents, while 40 percent identified as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. The remaining respondents were undecided or did not identify with either party, though a plurality of them said they were 'conservatives'."
But it's highly unlikely that Fatso would have dug into a three year old survey (it would require reading, and reading comprehension beyond the level of "three blind mice"). Besides, the findings of this survey seem like it's almost a 50-50 split if you add in the self-identifying conservatives. And not for nothin' but, as a sidebar, it's interesting that for a party that despises government, so many of its party members seek--and gain--employment in the federal government. IOKIYAR.
But anyway, this seems like just another one of Fatty's off-the-cuff fabrications, generated as needed by his little lizard brain. It's also one of his more transparent lies.
But here's what he neglects to consider (yeah, I know, that data set rivals the the Encyclopedia Britannica). Democratic leaders don't give a shit. In a couple of days, they will be calling the shots in the House and no Democrat in the Senate is going to hand over billions for a foot-stamping toddler to blow on a pointless, unconscionable vanity project.
What's next? "Democrat grannies are being hurt the most! GIVE ME MY WALL OR THEY'LL BE EATING CAT FOOD FOR A YEAR!!!
Wahhhh--wahhhh...
Sad.
Ethics, Schmethics
Oh, and hey, while digging into (cursorily, I admit) information about government employees, on the Consumer Product Safety Commission site, I came across a list of what everyone should know who works or anticipates working for the federal government.
There's a lot of the expected boilerplate about health insurance and time off, job classifications, and pay. Then there's a reminder that ethical behavior is required of federal employees as well (darn that federal guv'mint!).
See how many items in this list Fatty and Republican apparatchiks and "lawmakers" routinely break or spit upon:
"Employee Restrictions:
Ethical Conduct: [Fatty got this far and gave up.]
There are two core concepts underlying ethical principles for Federal employees:
Employees shall not use public office for private gain; and
Employees shall act impartially and not give preferential treatment to any private organization or individual.
In addition, employees must avoid any action that would create the appearance that they are violating the law or ethical standards."
Full stop here. Number one and two, and the "in addition" part are considered, by Trump and his family and cronies, to be requirements, not restrictions.
So there's more.
"Rules of ethical conduct govern subjects such as giving or accepting gifts, outside employment, abuse of position, required financial disclosures in certain situations and similar matters."
Wait...hahahahahahahahahahaha.....
"Political Activities:
Under the 1939 Hatch Act, Federal employees face restrictions on their ability to participate in political activities. Congress amended the Hatch Act in 1993 to permit more political activity although many restrictions still apply. Certain agencies and categories of employees, primarily in national security and law enforcement, are covered by the stricter rules that predate that amendment.
Generally speaking, federal employees covered by the 1993 amendments...may not:
Campaign for or against candidates in partisan elections;
Make campaign speeches for candidates in partisan elections;
Distribute campaign literature in partisan elections;
Hold office in political clubs or parties;
Use official authority or influence to interfere with an election;
Solicit or discourage political activity of anyone with business before their agency;
Solicit or receive political contributions (may be done in certain limited situations by federal labor or other employee organizations);
Be candidates for public office in partisan elections;
Engage in political activity while on duty, in a government office, wearing an official uniform or using a government vehicle; and,
Wear political buttons on duty."
Yeah, I gave up after the first dozen items on the ethical restrictions list were clearly broken by Fatty and the R's on a daily basis.
So there's two possibilities. First, almost all of the R pols working in the government labor under the same first grade reading comprehension skills as Fatty, OR, second (much more likely), they're all scheming, grasping, clutching, crooks.
I'm going with number two.
More Journalistic Weasel Words in the Headlines
So last night, scanning the Google news page, I ran across what must have been a half dozen major publications such as the WSJ and the Atlanta Journal Constitution (I won't count Faux) that reported acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker's lie about being an academic All-American as basically a mistake. The favored word is that he "incorrectly" identified himself as an All-American.
How about he lied about it? What's wrong with that? That's the truth.
"Incorrect" sounds like he left off an apostrophe or something.
I guarantee if Eric Holder had been beefing up his resume for years with some lying bullshit about what a BMOC he was back in the day, there'd be calls for lynch..., er, I mean, congressional investigations from here to rapture.
No. Whitaker LIED ABOUT IT.
File that, Gomer.
@Akhilleus: I don't know why you're knocking Trump. Maybe you forgot Obama once wore a tan suit to a press conference.
Now that Fatty's bullshit excuse for dodging the draft has been exposed as, well, a bullshit excuse, I see that there are complaints that Bill Clinton didn't go to Vietnam either.
No. He didn't. And neither did Dubya. Or Fatty. (Or Cheney, or a whole passel of war-mongering Confederate chickenhawks including:
Trent Lott
John Kyl
Mitch McConnell
Phil Gramm
Newt Gingrich
Tom Delay
Denny Hastert
John Boehner
Dick Armey
Rudy Giuliani
John Cornyn
Bill Frist
John Ashcroft
Jeb Bush
Karl Rove
Mittens Romney
Fred Thompson--but he played tough military types in the movies, so...).
But here's the difference. Bill Clinton was on the record protesting the war. He attended several protest rallies and made his position clear, on paper.
Dubya was all for it. As long as he didn't have to go.
Fatty? Who knows? My guess is that he didn't give a shit about it one way or the other as long as he could stay home and party (like Bush) and make money off daddy, while other guys did the fighting and dying. At some point he claimed that he was against the Iraq war, but there is no contemporary documentation of that position, as there is with Clinton and Vietnam.
As always, Fatty supports Fatty, and that's it. If it became convenient later to pretend he had staked out a moral position against the war in Iraq (pardon while I retch) he did it.
So there is a difference. I'm no Bill Clinton fanboi, but let's be clear about the historical facts.
Marie,
Well, I'm just a mean ol' partisan curmudgeon, I guess.
But hey, Obama's tan suit was perfectly okay (if a bit pedestrian). Those jumping up and down must have forgotten that St. Ronald used to wear tan(nish) and brown suits when it, er, suited him. And I have to say, he looked pretty sharp doing it. I guess he a got few things right.
Fatty's ubiquitous, boxy, ill-fitting, chintzy-looking, unendurably awful blue suits are an atrocious eyesore, but R's never rip his sartorial taste.
None to rip, I guess.
With all of the dustups over Combover Caligula's trip to Iraq and outing of the Seal Team, Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station has this excellent blog post in which he is not blaming Trump, but the military commanders who let it happen. As you may be aware, I was a career Army officer and I agree with Jim's opinion.
This morning my inbox is overloaded with demands and expectations that I say something pithy about Trump's visit to US troops in Iraq yesterday
OGJerry,
I agree wholeheartedly that the military fucked up here, especially in the case of outing the SEAL team. But as far as I can tell (and from my point of view as a liberal/progressive/never, ever Trumper) I don't see anyone criticizing Trump for visiting the troops. Full stop. What they're criticizing is how he did it and his outrageous actions while he was there. Politicizing his trip, ripping his enemies, and inviting front-line troops to join him in hyper-partisan hoorah-ing, is what gets people going, not the actual visit.
Trump, as usual, uses whatever is at his disposal to tear into his enemies (his enemies list includes, by the way, the US Constitution and democracy itself) and elevating himself, especially lying to do it. That's what people are pissed about, not the visit. As far as I'm concerned, it's about time he did something like this. But not the way he did it. That's classic Trump.
And it's no surprise that military personnel are more on the side of a pretend, faux tough guy who brags about giving them their first raise in ten years (an out and out lie), rather than a Democratic president like Barack Obama. The fact is that Trump is a far worse enemy of the military than Obama ever was, or could be, but he has cultivated a Fuck Everyone Else persona that seems to go along with a take-no-prisoners attitude that many soldiers seem to revel in, an even more disgusting outcome given the fact that Cadet Bone Spurs lied to keep his fat ass out of the military.
And let's not forget that Trump decided to do this (apparently) without informing the local authorities (Iraqi officials) who are now calling for the ouster of all American troops. That shit is not on the military, that is pure Trump arrogance.
So, yeah. There is blame for the military, but liberals and progressives and Democrats are not hypocrites for criticizing Trump (because he's no better than Obama, or something). He is an ignorant fool who seeks to laud himself at everyone's expense. If the brass allowed that, it's not just on them, it has as much to do with Trump's hubris, disdain for protocol, and smug, dangerous vanity as anything else.
More info about military attitudes toward the Pretender. Can't find a more recent poll than the one widely reported in Oct. The comment below is based on that poll, which was reported in "The Military Times."
My guess is that were one to disaggregate the numbers along education lines you'd uncover a congruence to the differences noted here among the enlisted, branch of service and the officers in each, which in turn is largely reflective of the Pretender's overall support.
https://taskandpurpose.com/trump-military-poll-officer-enlisted-marines/
@Marie.
It is good to see that you posted a link to Larry Eisenberg's obit but you may have missed their obit to this other prolific NYTimes commenter. This individual, for me, is not as fondly remembered as Larry. YMMV
A Tribute to a Prolific Times Commenter: Richard Luettgen had written nearly 30,000 comments on Times articles and columns over the years. He was known for not holding back. Richard died on Dec. 21.
You know that you've made it as a Times commenter when your obituary is published in the paper of record.
@Ken: Thanks for the link to the military polling on Trump. I was pleasantly surprised by the results but then I started reading the comments. Oh my but again I'm not surprised by their attitude.
@Akhilleus: I think that Jim Wright was commenting about the traffic that he had received in his inbox. My news feeds and social media sources have not been attacking Trump for going, just what he did and said while he was there.
In 1966 while I was commanding an Armored Cavalry Troop on the Korean DMZ, President LBJ came to visit the troops. Our Squadron Commander said while briefing us on our unit role in this visit that there were three categories of units/participants. 1.) Meeters, 2.) Eaters and 3.) Beaters. Meeters would get to meet the president. Eaters would get to eat with the president. Beaters would be out in the boonies beating the brush to make sure that the DPRK didn't get close to him. Our unit was one of the many Beaters. If I had still be on active duty and stationed in Iraq, I'd have volunteered my unit to be Beaters for the *45 visit.