Saturday
Feb012020
The Commentariat -- February 2, 2020
Afternoon Update:
Zack Budryk of the Hill: "Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Trump's defense team in his Senate impeachment trial, said Sunday that the president tying military aid to Ukraine to investigations of his rivals would be 'troubling if it were proved' but that 'troubling is not the criteria for impeachment.' 'On Election Day, as a citizen, I will allow that to enter into my decision,' Dershowitz said when asked by Fox News's Chris Wallace if he would find the alleged quid pro quo at the center of the impeachment fight 'troubling.'... Dershowitz responded, 'Of course any citizen would find that troubling if it were proved.... If a president linked aid to an ally to personal benefit that was not in the public interest, that would be wrong,' he added. 'That would be a reason for him not to vote for him.'" Mrs. McC Translation: I only say this stuff to get on national teevee. Vote for the anti-Trump.
Hahahahahaha. Zack Budryk: "Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said on Sunday he believes that despite his certain acquittal this week, President Trump's impeachment will dissuade him from conduct of the kind that led to the impeachment proceedings.... 'If a call like this gets you an impeachment, I would think he would think twice before he did it again,' Alexander added, referencing a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky...." Mrs. McC: That's a lot like how the Mueller investigation made Trump think twice when he called Zelensky the day after Mueller wrapped up his report by testifying before Congress. Is Alexander stupid or does he think we are?
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Presidential Race
Jonathan Martin & Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "After a long campaign of ideological clashes, policy debates and talk of a grand reckoning on the direction of the Democratic Party, the presidential primaries starting on Monday will be shaped by a less lofty but increasingly urgent matter: determining the best candidate to defeat an incumbent who has already proved to be a political survivor. With Republicans ready to acquit President Trump of two impeachment charges next week, the nation's political table has been set for 2020: Congress will not remove him from office..., leaving the fate of Mr. Trump to the November general election and the candidate nominated by Democrats in the coming months. From the liberal left to the moderate middle, the major presidential contenders are now honing or recalibrating their final appeals before Iowa's caucuses to make the case that they represent the party's best chance to overcome Mr. Trump's well-funded re-election operation and win back the White House this fall."
Lisa Lerer, et al., of the New York Times: "A highly anticipated poll of Iowa Democrats, set to be released two days before the presidential caucuses, was shelved on Saturday night because of concerns about irregularities in the methodology. The apparent problem, raised by aides to Pete Buttigieg, prompted CNN to cancel an hourlong special organized to release the results of their survey, conducted with The Des Moines Register.... A [Buttigieg] supporter received a poll phone call from an operator working for the polling operation, but ... [Buttigieg's] name was not listed on the menu of options.... The poll is conducted by telephone from a call center, where operators read from a prepared script.... One operator had apparently enlarged the font size on their computer screen, perhaps cutting off Mr. Buttigieg's name from the list of options, according to two people.... The survey, published by The Des Moines Register for 76 years, is considered the gold standard for polling in the notoriously hard-to-predict state and is carefully watched as an early indicator of strength in the caucuses." Politico's story is here.
Reid Epstein, et al., of the New York Times explain how the Iowa caucuses work (or not). Mrs. McC: I read somewhere else that there will be some kind of call-in wrinkle this year to further confuse things. The story doesn't mention that.
Jim Tankersley & Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York unveiled a plan on Saturday that would raise an estimated $5 trillion in new tax revenue from high earners and corporations, a proposal that would almost certainly raise his personal tax bill but is less aggressive than those from his most liberal rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. The proposal includes a repeal of President Trump's 2017 tax cuts for high earners, along with a new 5 percent 'surcharge' on incomes above $5 million per year. It would raise capital gains taxes for Americans earning more than $1 million a year and maintain a limit on federal deductions of state and local tax payments set under the 2017 law, which some Democrats have pushed to eliminate." An AP story is here.
The Plot Against Bernie. David Siders of Politico: "A small group of Democratic National Committee members has privately begun gauging support for a plan to potentially weaken Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign and head off a brokered convention. In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party's national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of ... top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say.... It is possible [Sanders] could arrive at the convention with the most delegates -- but without enough to win the nomination on the first ballot. It is also possible that he and Elizabeth Warren, a fellow progressive, could arrive at the convention in second and third place, but with more delegates combined than the frontrunner. If, on the second ballot, superdelegates were to throw their support to someone else, tipping the scales, many moderate Democrats fear the upheaval that would cause could weaken the eventual nominee."
The New York Times is live-updating Saturday events in the presidential race. The Washington Post has Iowa caucus updates here.
Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "The Department of Justice revealed in a court filing late Friday that it has two dozen emails related to ... Donald Trump's involvement in the withholding of millions in security assistance to Ukraine -- a disclosure that came just hours after the Senate voted against subpoenaing additional documents and witnesses in Trump's impeachment trial, paving the way for his acquittal. The filing, released near midnight Friday, marks the first official acknowledgment from the Trump administration that emails about the President's thinking related to the aid exist, and that he was directly involved in asking about and deciding on the aid as early as June. The administration is still blocking those emails from the public and has successfully kept them from Congress. A lawyer with the Office of Management and Budget wrote to the court that 24 emails between June and September 2019 -- including an internal discussion among DOD officials called 'POTUS follow-up' on June 24 -- should stay confidential because the emails describe 'communications by either the President, the Vice President, or the President's immediate advisors regarding Presidential decision-making about the scope, duration, and purpose of the hold on military assistance to Ukraine.'" Emphasis added.
The Dangers the Senate Has Unleashed. Sam Brodey & Erin Banco of the Daily Beast: After Senate Republicans acquit him, "U.S. administration officials and foreign officials acknowledge Trump will increasingly manufacture his own foreign policy decisions, with his personal associates, without the input of his intelligence and national security agencies. That means Trump will more likely have the ability to run his personal political errands -- and business agenda -- with little, if any, scrutiny. And when that scheme falls apart, and Trump's personal associates turn on him, or decide to detail the behind-the-scenes shenanigans, the U.S. will lose credibility on the world stage.... National security officials ... [are] genuinely concerned, they said, that the American political system will systematically be compromised by American adversaries and that the foundation of the country's democracy will be peeled away.... Perhaps even more concerning ... is Trump's reliance on conspiracy theories to form the basis of his foreign policy objectives."
Todd Purdum of the Atlantic writes another Requiem for the Senate, in which he recognizes "McConnell's years-long legacy of hyper-partisanship, unremitting obstruction of Barack Obama, and unswerving loyalty to Donald Trump and his caucus's raw political interests crystallized into a profound upending of the norms and procedures of the body he purports to revere."
Jeremy Diamond & Kristen Holmes of CNN: "... don't expect Trump to apologize or express any contrition for his conduct. Instead, people close to the President say they anticipate he will claim vindication and continue to proclaim his complete and total innocence."
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "The state of the union is upside down and inside out and sauerkraut. Trump has changed literally everything in the last three years, transforming and coarsening the game. On Friday night, he became, arguably, the most brutishly powerful Republican of all time. Never has a leader had such a stranglehold on his party, subsuming it with one gulp."
Way Beyond the Beltway
Jack Khoury of Haaretz & the AP: "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday the Palestinian Authority has cut all ties with the United States and Israel, including those relating to security, after rejecting a Middle East peace plan presented by ... Donald Trump. Abbas was in Cairo to address the Arab League, which backed the Palestinians in their opposition to Trump's plan. The Arab League rejected Trump's plan, saying in a communique it would not lead to a just peace deal and adding it will not cooperate with the United States to execute the plan." Mrs. McC: What?? You mean Jared read 25 books for nothing?? He should publish his syllabus so we'll know what not to read.
News Ledes
Guardian: "A man has been shot dead by armed police on a busy south London high street following a terrorist-related incident in which a number of people are believed to have been stabbed. Witnesses said they saw a man with silver canisters strapped to his chest and holding a 'machete' being chased by armed plainclothes officers down Streatham High Road before being shot. The attacker was under active surveillance, implying he was considered to post a serious risk, and was well known to the counter-terror authorities, the Guardian understands. He was also the subject of a live investigation."
The New York Times' live updates of developments in the coronavirus epidemic are here.
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Reader Comments (8)
Will fatty see his shadow today? How can he miss something that
huuuuge.
Guess that means we'll have five more years of crime and corruption
and destruction by the White House and Senate Mafia.
Sunday Sermon:
"Whether you live here in the United States or in a “s----hole" country (huffpost.com) dishonesty is often richly rewarded.
Ask the Houston Astros, who it turns out won the 2017 World Series by cheating (forbes.com), though since its discovery the Astros' star has dimmed.
Piles of money are nice, too. The richest lady in Africa, Isabel dos Santos, amassed a multi-billion dollar fortune by stealing from one of those “s----hole” countries, Angola, where her father was president (nytimes.com). She and the American companies that aided her theft are under investigation.
Corruption knows no borders. Here, where our president used taxpayer money to extort a “favor” from another country to smear his likely November opponent, corruption swirls in and out of the administration. A penchant for playing fast and loose with other people’s money followed Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce, into the president’s inner circle (nation.com), and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who is holding a public resources fire sale for his buddies (hcn.org) has found an equally cozy home in the Trump cabinet.
No wonder.
By now most know Trump really meant he’d run the country like his business. It’s one of the few promises he’s kept. Build your success on an inheritance of nearly half a billion dollars, add a talent for slick promotion, stiff your contractors, and don’t sweat immense debt, because there’s always more Russian bail-out money to be had (washingtonpost.com). And now that Trump controls the national treasury, what’s a trillion-dollar deficit here or there?
Outright bribery is also okay with this president. He has said he’d like to get rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (nytimes.com) because it handcuffs American businesses by requiring them to behave honesty.
Makes sense.
When corruption is the commodity, Mr. Trump wants open borders everywhere."
Footnote: You tough-minded folk get the original. Our delicate paper required an edit.
It now reads, ".....or a country our president confuses with 'toilets'"...
The groundhog says "Early spring, you guys..." I don't think even that thought can dislodge our winter of discontent.
I'm sorry, Iowa and New Hampshire-- you really aren't "all that..."
Someone is running an ugly ad and it's only early February. It ultimately says that everyone should call Bob Casey and tell him to battle the "radical left" and oppose impeachment. Bob is not doing that, but it's a taste of the nasties to come. Can't wait. If we are the radical left, I feel perfectly free to badmouth the Rotten Right-- Corruption is our name and corruption is our game.
Happy Puppy and Kitten Bowl...
After viewing the SNL sketch above ( loved the judge!) I thought of the opening of Mel Brook's "Blazing Saddles" where a group of white railroad bosses ask the black railroad workers to sing a song:
"Come on niggers–-sing us a nigger song."
There's a scratching of heads and faces looking puzzled but then suddenly they break our in a great rendition of Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You."
What a gas it would be if the Democrats got together and did a chorus and dance number to this song. Schiff with top hat and cane, Nancy with swinging skirts waving her gavel, others dancing their way to the podium where they finish with throwing raspberries out to the silent majority of sycophants and sleepy elephants in the peanut gallery.
Mel Brooks always uncovered corruption and evil in the most delightful way–- (" the best way to bring down someone like Hitler is to make fun of him") SNL is doing much the same and is doing a bag-up job.
P.S. Caught a half hour interview with Kushner and Ian Bremmer yesterday. The arrogance of Jared was apparent right from the start–-he never mentioned all the books he read but it was clear he knew everything there was to know about this subject and those that disagreed were ignorant. I was struck with how truly boring he is.
PD,
Yeah, Jared sound like a ton of fun.
To generalize, those whose only claim to accomplishment is their hefty bank account are always boring.
As I'm fond of saying, these are the dangerous people who are dangerous because they don't get the jokes, regardless of the degrees they might have mounted on their office wall.
It's a stereotypically American problem. The confusion of money with virtue, with value, with accomplishment and with self-worth.
And it will only get worse, as more and more inherited wealth is bestowed on the next privileged generation. Combined with the open doors we have created to money in politics, it's a recipe for assuring government by idiots for a long time to come.
Yeah, about those 25 books Young Jared read? I’m guessing that at least ten of them were titles like “The Idiot’s Guide to the Middle East” ( he skipped the chapters on the Palestinians—too hard to understand), “The Peace Plan Primer” by Donald J. Trump, “Beginning Diplomacy” (he skimmed the intro), and “Why Palestinians Don’t Deserve To Live” by Meir Kahane (the Cliff Notes version). The rest had stick figures, funny animal pictures, and word balloons.
So how come his Great Plan didn’t fly?
It’s a mystery.
The open doors for money in politics are working, in a rare example of success for the trickle down theory. In 2018 we saw record amounts spent on House races, and now state races are also breaking records. It might be that democracy will price itself out of the market.