The Commentariat -- September 9, 2018

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

David Martin of CBS News interviews Bob Woodward:

Quint Forgey of Politico: "Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday denied participating in any conversation about invoking the 25th Amendment in a bid to oust ... Donald Trump. 'No. Never,' Pence told Margaret Brennan of CBS News in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on 'Face the Nation.'... [Anonymous] asserted that Trump's cabinet considered invoking the 25th Amendment early on in his administration because of the 'instability many witnessed.'” Mrs. McC: What with Karen Pence having long since finished sewing up new calico curtains for the Oval, I find that hard to believe.

Matthew Mosk & Kaitlyn Folmer of ABC News: "George Papadopoulos, the one-time foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump who became swept up in the special counsel investigation, says members of the Trump campaign team were 'fully aware' and in many cases supportive of his efforts to broker a summit [between Trump &] Russian President Vladimir Putin."

Rebecca Traister of New York on the Ump's Sexist Calls: "The point isn't about the catsuit or the shirt or the broken racket or even the U.S. Open title. It's about the ways in which women's -- and especially nonwhite women's -- dress and bodies and behavior and expression and tone are still deemed unruly if they do not conform to the limited view of femininity established by men, especially if that unruliness suggests a direct threat to male authority."

*****

Watergate All Over Again. Calvin Woodward & Nancy Benac of the AP: "The White House seethes with intrigue and backstabbing as aides hunt for the anonymous Deep (state) Throat among them. A president feels besieged by tormentors -- Bob Woodward is driving him crazy -- so he tends his version of an enemies list, wondering aloud if he should rid himself of his attorney general or the special prosecutor or both. For months, the Trump administration and its scandals have carried whiffs of Watergate and drawn comparisons to the characters and crimes of the Nixon era. But this week, history did not just repeat itself, it climbed out of the dustbin and returned in the flesh. There was John Dean again, testifying on the Hill, warning anew about a cancer on the presidency. Nearly every element in ... Donald Trump's trouble has a Watergate parallel. Special prosecutor Robert Mueller is leading an independent investigation sparked by a break-in at the Democratic National Committee, the same target that opened the Watergate can of worms, though this time the burglary was digital and linked to Moscow, not the Oval Office.... 'This is a president who says things publicly that we know from the tapes that Nixon said privately,' says Timothy Naftali, a New York University historian who directed the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum."

Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "In yet another turn in a legal battle that has plagued President Trump for months, Michael D. Cohen, his longtime fixer, offered late Friday night to tear up a nondisclosure agreement with a pornographic film star who has long claimed she had an affair with Mr. Trump. It remained unclear why Mr. Cohen made the abrupt move to scrap the hush-money deal with the star, Stephanie Clifford.... But one effect of voiding the arrangement would be that it could spare Mr. Trump the embarrassment of having to give a deposition in a lawsuit related to the case. In a letter dated Sept. 7, Mr. Cohen's lawyer, Brent H. Blakely, wrote to Ms. Clifford's lawyer, Michael Avenatti, saying that Mr. Cohen had agreed 'to accept the rescission' of the deal, which was reached in October 2016, a month before the presidential election.... Shortly after the letter was filed in Federal District Court in Los Angeles, Mr. Avenatti accused Mr. Cohen on Twitter of 'playing games and trying to protect Donald Trump.'"

Spencer Hsu & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "U.S. prosecutors have acknowledged they misunderstood text messages they used to claim in court that a Russian woman traded sex for access and should be jailed pending trial on charges she was a foreign agent attempting to infiltrate the National Rifle Association and other American conservative groups. The concession came in a late-night court filing Friday in which prosecutors said Maria Butina, 29, should stay in custody as a flight risk but wrote 'the government's understanding of this particular text conversation was mistaken.'"

Josh Gerstein, et al., of Politico: "Talk show host and liberal activist Randy Credico testified for more than two hours Friday before a grand jury run by special counsel Robert Mueller's office that appears to be zeroing in on former Trump adviser Roger Stone. Credico emerged from the questioning, describing it as something of an ordeal. 'It was like sitting on an electric chair for a couple of hours,' he told Politico.... Credico is a devoted advocate for [WikiLeaks founder Julian] Assange, and Stone's contacts with Credico have led to speculation that Credico served as an intermediary of sorts between Assange and Stone." (Also linked yesterday.)

Ernesto Londoño & Nicholas Casey of the New York Times: "The Trump administration held secret meetings with rebellious military officers from Venezuela over the last year to discuss their plans to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro, according to American officials and a former Venezuelan military commander who participated in the talks. Establishing a clandestine channel with coup plotters in Venezuela was a big gamble for Washington, given its long history of covert intervention across Latin America. Many in the region still deeply resent the United States for backing previous rebellions, coups and plots in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, Brazil and Chile, and for turning a blind eye to the abuses military regimes committed during the Cold War.... One of the Venezuelan military commanders involved in the secret talks was hardly an ideal figure to help restore democracy: He is on the American government's own sanctions list of corrupt officials in Venzuela.... American officials eventually decided not to help the plotters, and the coup plans stalled. But the Trump administration's willingness to meet several times with mutinous officers intent on toppling a president in the hemisphere could backfire politically.... The White House, which declined to answer detailed questions about the talks, said in a statement that it was important to engage in 'dialogue with all Venezuelans who demonstrate a desire for democracy.'..." ...

... Because nothing says 'desire for democracy' quite so well as a military coup. -- Schlub, in today's Comments

Elise Viebeck of the Washington Post: "President Trump will provide written answers under oath in the defamation lawsuit brought by former 'Apprentice' contestant Summer Zervos, who claims Trump sexually assaulted her in 2007, a new court filing stated."

Gideon Resnick of the Daily Beast: "In the late summer of 2016, when Donald Trump's presidential bid appeared to be in shambles, campaign chairman Paul Manafort was dismissed and [Steve] Bannon was brought on board. Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, had to cozy up to [Reince] Priebus and the RNC out of necessity.... Bannon, [Bob] Woodward wrote, 'wanted to be sure that the RNC was not going to leave Trump' because 'there were rumors about donors fleeing and how everyone in the party was trying to figure a way out of the Trump mess.'... 'As Bannon later remarked..., "I reached out and sucked Reince Preibus' dick on August 15 and told the establishment, we can't win without you."’” Mrs. McC: Yeah, I can picture it. Ewww!

Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post: "For all the speculation about Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and whether she'll vote for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, there is an issue beyond abortion rights perhaps weighing more heavily on her...: protections for Alaska Natives. Advocates for Alaska Natives, who were crucial to Murkowski's re-election in 2010, tell HuffPost they've been flooding her office all week and urging her to oppose Kavanaugh. They're raising concerns about his record on climate change, which is already causing real damage in Alaska. As a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh in 2017 held that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks the authority to regulate hydrofluorocarbons, chemicals linked to global warming. They're also unhappy with his record on voting rights. Kavanaugh voted in 2012 to uphold a South Carolina voter ID law that disenfranchised more than 80,000 minority registered voters. The most pressing matter, however, is a case the Supreme Court is reviewing on Nov. 5 that could devastate Alaska Natives' subsistence fishing rights. The case, Sturgeon v. Frost, raises questions about who has the authority to regulate water in national parks in the state ― the federal government or the state of Alaska." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Nope, not a fish fighting chilly weather (or a poet): "The case arose after Alaska resident John Sturgeon, who was on an annual moose-hunting trip, was riding a hovercraft on a river running through a national park when Park Service officials threatened to give him a citation. Sturgeon is arguing that his ability to use his hovercraft in this scenario is about states' rights and that federal authority should be eliminated." Murkowski is tougher than Susan Collins. When she lost her primary election in 2010 to a Tea Party winger, she ran as a write-in candidate, in defiance of Mitch McConnell & the gang. "Her write-in campaign was aided in large part with substantial monetary aid and assistance from the Native corporations and PACs...." ...

... digby: Alaska Natives "are also worried about health care since a large majority of Alaska natives benefit from Medicaid and Obamacare. (So do plenty of non-native Alaskans for that matter.) Breaking with the man who thinks it's funny and cool to call Elizabeth Warren 'Pocohontas' won't hurt her[.]" ...

... Joe Lawlor of the Portland (Maine) Press Herald: "Sen. Susan Collins of Maine on Friday said that she remains undecided on whether she will vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Collins acknowledged that many are lobbying her and want to know where she stands. Though she has read or watched most of Kavanaugh's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, she has yet to review all of the material presented during the hearing." Mrs. McC: Uh-huh. ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: I meant to embed this Friday night. It's an incredible thing that answers the usually-unanswerable historical question: What would So-&-So think if s/he could see what's going on today? John Dean is not rolling over in his grave nearly half a century after his Watergate committee testimony: he's testifying:

... Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker: "The past week in Washington offered what appeared to be a startling contrast: on the one hand, tales of a President unhinged, issuing garbled, contradictory commands to appalled aides who were conspiring against him; on the other, a thoughtful Supreme Court nominee, calmly parrying the futile assaults of a frustrated senatorial minority. Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh looked and sounded very different, but those appearances deceived. Both men were pulling the country in the same direction, toward more inequality, more pollution, and, to put the matter bluntly, women once more dying from botched abortions."

Election 2018

Adam Nagourney of the New York Times: "Barack Obama came to the front lines of the Democratic battle to take back Congress on Saturday, describing the coming election as a pivotal moment for a divided nation and a chance 'to restore some sanity to our politics.' 'If we don't step up, things are going to get worse,' Mr. Obama said at a rally in California, a state where Democrats are hoping to capture seven seats now held by Republicans. 'Where there is a vacuum in our democracy, when we are not participating, we are not paying attention, other voices fill the void.'... From the start of his 23-minute speech, Mr. Obama, wearing a white shirt with an open collar, made clear he had set himself a different task: He was there to promote the candidacies of Democrats in California and across the country trying to win Republican seats. To that end, he named seven such Democrats running for the House, offering them brief and enthusiastic endorsements that were captured on Democratic Party cameras and that will presumably end up in candidate advertisements before long." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Very radical -- mentioning something about the candidates you're there to endorse instead of just talking about yourself. ...

David Cay Johnston of DCReport: "Donald Trump's tweets telling the super-rich to expect another big tax cut if Republicans hold onto the House and Senate is paying off for the GOP. National Republican fundraising continues to run well ahead of Democrats, who are saddled with debt, new Federal Election Commission reports show. Republicans have raised $1.1 billion this year, while the parallel Democratic Party organizations have yet to break the billion dollar mark. The Democrats are also saddled with 11 times as much debt as the GOP.... Money alone does not win elections, but it helps." --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

MEANWHILE, Democrats have to win BIG. Carol Anderson, in a chapter from her book & published in the New York Times writes, Republicans have been working hard to suppress Democratic votes since at least the 1980s. And they've convinced their own voters that extraordinary measures are necessary: as Rick Perlstein & Livia Gershon wrote in an essay appearing in TPM & linked here yesterday, "... almost three quarters [of Republicans] said voter fraud happens 'somewhat' or 'very often.'" If you're inclined not to vote for local & state offices because you don't know who the candidates are & you're afraid you'll vote in a dummy, vote for the dumb Dem anyway. As long as Republicans control the election apparatus, they'll find multiple ways to suppress Democratic votes -- maybe even yours next time. It's not as simple as gerrymandering & voter IDs, as Anderson makes clear.

Sonia Rao of the Washington Post: "When asked on Friday, the final night of the preliminary competition [of the Miss America pageant], what she believed was the most serious issue facing the nation, Madeline Collins, Miss West Virginia..., [said] 'Donald Trump is the biggest issue facing our country today.'... Collins continued: 'Unfortunately, he has caused a lot of divide in our country, and until we can trust in him and the choices that he makes for our country, we cannot become united.' Because each contestant was given only 20 seconds to respond, Collins did not go into more detail.... On Thursday, when asked how the NFL should handle players kneeling during the national anthem, Miss Virginia, Emili McPhail, emphasized that the protests are not anti-patriotic, but are 'absolutely about police brutality.' 'Kneeling during the national anthem is absolutely a right that you have, to stand up for what you believe in, and to make the right decision that's right for you,' she said."

Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Eric Levitz of New York: Dr. Richard Sackler made billions on the opioid OxyContin, which he invented & marketed with deceptive ads & other propaganda vehicles claiming OxyContin was not addictive. "Thus, Sackler created immense value for his shareholders -- while providing the American people with a product they value so greatly, demand for it has remained robust, even as opioids began killing upwards of 40,000 Americans a year.... So, after creating billions of dollars in value by selling patented opioids, he's poised to make millions selling an innovative form of buprenorphine, a mild opiate that reduces cravings for harder opioids like OxyContin." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... But, but, Eric. He's a philanthropist! (You may not be surprised to learn that Rudy Giuliani was one of Sackler's defense lawyers.) (Also linked yesterday.)

Medlar's Sports Report. Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post: "Chair umpire Carlos Ramos managed to rob not one but two players in the women's U.S. Open final. Nobody has ever seen anything like it: An umpire so wrecked a big occasion that both players, Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams alike, wound up distraught with tears streaming down their faces during the trophy presentation and an incensed crowd screamed boos at the court. Ramos took what began as a minor infraction and turned it into one of the nastiest and most emotional controversies in the history of tennis, all because he couldn't take a woman speaking sharply to him.... When Williams ... busted her racket over losing a crucial game, Ramos docked her a point. Breaking equipment is a violation, and because Ramos already had hit her with [a] coaching violation, it was a second offense and so ratcheted up the penalty.... Williams vented, 'You stole a point from me. You're a thief.' There was absolutely nothing worthy of penalizing in the statement.... [But] he gave Williams that third violation for 'verbal abuse' and a whole game penalty, and now it was 5-3, and we will never know whether young Osaka really won the 2018 U.S. Open or had it handed to her by a man who was going to make Serena Williams feel his power." Ramos has taken worse from at least one male player-- Rafael Nadal -- & let it slide.

Beyond the Beltway

His Tinfoil Hat Has Shorted Out. Laura Vozzella of the Washington Post: "Fresh off a sit-down with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Virginia state Sen. Richard H. Black turned up on an Arab TV channel last week [to claim that] ... Britain's MI6 intelligence service was planning a chemical weapons attack on the Syrian people, which it would then blame on Assad. 'Around four weeks ago, we knew that British intelligence was working toward a chemical attack in order to blame the Syrian government, to hold Syria responsible,' Black said on Al Mayadeen, an Arab news channel based in Beirut. Black (R-Loudoun) said later that he meant the British were planning not to carry out an attack themselves, but to either direct rebels to do so or stage a phony attack, with actors posing as victims. Black also said some chemical attacks previously reported to have occurred in Syria were British fakes, pulled off with help from volunteer first responders known as White Helmets.... The State Department flatly rejected Black's allegations, which echoed what it called 'outrageous' Russian and Assad-regime claims that Britain and the United States have carried out chemical attacks with help from the White Helmets. ... Black, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and retired Pentagon lawyer, regards Assad as a protector of Syrian Christians and a buffer against Islamist extremism.... Five Democrats are competing to take him on next year in elections that will determine whether Republicans hold on to their two-seat majority in the Senate." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: If you are planning a Diogenes-type mission to find the dumbest person in the U.S.A., you could save some time by checking out Republicans in state legislatures.

Way Beyond

Vogue photograph.

... Maureen Dowd: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern "is part of the club of young, progressive leaders, along with Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron, trying to counter President Trump's ugly impulses against the environment and multilateralism."

News Ledes

Weather Channel: "Florence has strengthened back into a hurricane and is forecast to rapidly intensify and could pose a serious danger for the U.S. East Coast where a direct strike is increasingly likely by mid- to late week. If you are near the U.S. East Coast, develop or review your hurricane preparedness plan and be ready to implement it if necessary." ...

... Washington Post Update: "Hurricane Florence is tracking toward the East Coast [link fixed] with invariability rarely seen in storms several days away from landfall. While forecasters were careful to cite 'high uncertainty' and 'low model confidence' last week, their tone changed after watching the storm's eventual path barely shift from what they had considered to be the worst-case scenario. On Sunday evening, the National Hurricane Center was forecasting Florence to become a strong Category 4 just prior to making landfall somewhere on the Southeast or Mid-Atlantic coast on Thursday."

Comments

[Schlub]

In response to the report from Venezuela, the White House, which declined to answer detailed questions about the talks, said in a statement that it was important to engage in “dialogue with all Venezuelans who demonstrate a desire for democracy.”

Because nothing says "desire for democracy" quite so well as a military coup.

[safari]

Sure seems like those Miss America contestants would blow away your average elected representative in any debate if adherence to facts actually mattered. But I wouldn't blame them one bit for rejecting the opportunity to go to Washington and work in that den of hounds and thieves.

The looming "wave" of elected women arriving in November would be a much needed jolt of sanity to our politics, but I fear they'll face the true test of Resistance: ground zero of the Old White Man's Country Club: an equal opportunity institution, but women and minorities will be thwarted and discouraged to apply at every turn.

[PD Pepe]

Krugman asks: So who is Brett Kavenaugh? If he looks like a right-wing apparatchik and quacks like a RWA, he's almost surely a RWA, says he. Which brings Krugman to spell out the coming constitutional crisis :

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/opinion/kavanaugh-supreme-court-partisan.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-columnists

By the way, it was Mazi Hirono who brought up the Alaska problems when questioning Kavenaugh–- especially for Lisa M's ears.

[Patrick]

Here's a piece in Sunday WaPo in which the author (Loren Schulman, CNAS) argues that "civil servants" should stick around and take care of business rather than resign on principal.

She suggests that sticking it through is the appropriate choice, doing the best you can under difficult circumstances.

Her premise is that the Trump administration is extraordinarily difficult to work in, and she is surely correct. But she may not realize that for career professionals in the federal national security biz (Defense, IC, State etc.) ALL administrations present the career professional with that question. The federal government relies on political (non-career appointee) leadership and career (professional) officers, and it is the lucky career pro who never has to work for a mini-Trump pol appointee. So, they already know how to do this ... just have never had to do it on this scale before.

And ... most career pros don't write tell-all books, but that could change.

[PD Pepe]

In the latest New Yorker Jeffrey Toobin paints a thorough portrait of Rudy Giuliani which by this time we aren't surprised by any of it. But this amusing piece brought back memories of Rudy's (when he was mayor of N.Y C.) little appreciation for the First Amendment which the courts repeatedly slapped down.

"Outraged by a painting at the Brooklyn Museum by Chris Ofili, which depicts a black Virgin Mary and incorporates lumps of dried elephant dung, he began withholding the museum’s city subsidies and threatening to terminate its lease, remove its board, and possibly seize the property. After New York magazine took out advertisements on city buses featuring the magazine’s logo and reading “Possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn’t taken credit for,” Giuliani ordered transit officials to strip the ads. New York sued. “Our twice-elected Mayor, whose name is in every local newspaper on a daily basis, who is featured regularly on the cover of weekly magazines, who chooses to appear in drag on a well-known national TV show, and who many believe is considering a run for higher office, objects to his name appearing on the side of city buses,” the judge on the case wrote in an opinion, siding with New York. “Who would have dreamed that the Mayor would object to more publicity?”

Gee, wonder who that sounds like? Two of a feather flock together...

[Ken Winkes]

Out of the country for the next month, leaving computer and dumb phone behind in Trumpland.

At this point, though nightmarish memory of The Pretender, Kavanaugh, McConnell, Graham and the entire lying bunch of Repugs is sure to persist, I intend to return.

Wouldn't miss my chance to vote in November, something that as the Anderson piece above underscores is far more privilege than right.

Don't have a Sunday Sermon to leave you with, so will substitute this latest LTTE:

"A recent letter blamed government regulation for the increasing frequency and severity of wildfires.

No surprise there. There are more fires and more smoke, and government regulation has always been a favored whipping boy.

But now that some of the smoke has cleared from the skies, we might want to look through the haze of politics at what's really behind the fires that in 2017 consumed 9.7 million acres (wildfiretoday.com) and more than half of the U.S. Forest Service’s budget (phys.org/news).

The appearance and extent of such devastating fires not coincidentally parallels the documented rapid rise in global temperatures that in the American West has made trees and undergrowth more combustible and contributed to raging insect infestations, killing trees by the millions and turning them into massive piles of kindling.

What has regulation to do with all that? A great deal if we consider that government policies also regulate, and the current administration has encouraged more, not less, use of the fossil fuels that are one of the primary causes of our warming temperatures.

Budgets regulate behavior too, and the U.S. Forest Service, already overburdened by firefighting, had its overall 2018 budget cut by nearly one billion dollars (www.fs.fed.us/sites/default/files/usfs-fy18-budget-overview), leaving it with fewer resources to deal with the consequences of more human intrusion into our forests, the fires that follow on the heels of increased fossil fuel use and from the massive fires themselves. These factors alone are major contributors to the vicious feedback loop in which we’re enmeshed.

To break the cycle, we should cut more trees, say those who would reap riches from diminished logging regulation, but study of wildfires’ locations and intensity suggests that instead of decreasing wildfire hazards, logging can have the opposite effect (nytimes.com).

Wildfires, it seems, are not the only things blowing smoke."

[Mrs. Bea McCrabbie]

@Ken Winkes: Happy trails. If you get stuck in a far-off place, you can always call for an absentee ballot. Maybe you should take that dumb phone, just in case.

[PD Pepe]

Oh, Ken, we are going to miss you and as the elderly Amish gentleman said to Harrison Ford in "Witness"––BE CAREFUL OUT THERE AMONG THEM ENGLISH!

[Jeanne]

Read the Krugman piece, then made the mistake of reading some comments... usually they are at least half and half, but holy crap, so many horrid ones. The hatred for anyone on the left is irrational and scary. There is no doubt that the worm angling for a lifetime appointment will get it, and the right is screaming that the Dems simply are not polite and won't roll over and play dead, and we are stuck with the dregs of humanity running the store. I have given up on the thought that anything Mueller finds will actually stick and give us relief from the "mole people" Charlie has decried for years. (Can anyone stand listening to whinyvoice Kellyann?) Boy, do I need a new hobby... Happy gray, rainy and potentially hurricane-ridden Sunday, everyone...