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.
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Reader Comments (8)
Do read Dave Barry's "Year in Review" in the WaPo. Laugh through your tears.
The late Ryszard Kapuscinski –-author of "The Last Tsar"–-coined a striking term to describe those susceptible to demagoguery. They were believers, he said, in the Great Yesterday. We've seen this manifested certainly since Trump and his red hat strode into the political arena. Others like Orbán and Modi both evoke visions of this kind of thing–-a "Greater Hungary" without immigrants to an India without Muslims. And of course Fatty, who would really want America without immigrants of color.
Adam Hochschild, writing about the Oregon standoff with the Bundy's, is a perfect example of this kind of Great Yesterdays. He points out that those that harbor these feelings have a shaky connection to history and have several features in common.
One: hinted at but not spelled out is that everyone who enjoyed that "golden era" in the past was of the same ethnicity or religion.
Two: The Great Yesterday was destroyed by malevolent outsiders.
Three: In traversing the arduous path toward restoration, the faithful are enduring a martyrdom that will be rewarded.
Trump's faithful will continue to believe even if they suffer doing so–-they play the victims just like the Bundy's. And lost in the mythologizing is the reality they refuse to acknowledge.
In the Oregon standoff it was pointed out that corporate ranches, oil drillers and giant lumber and mining companies already exploit much of the federal land on very generous terms. With Trump at the helm this will only increase as Fatty puts wolves in charge of every sheep pen in sight. Here's a Wash-Po headline re: this fun fact:
TRUMP'S PICK FOR MANAGING FEDERAL LANDS DOESN'T BELIEVE THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD HAVE ANY.
Hat's off to ( Koch funded) William Perry Pendley ( tea at four, mother?) newly appointed acting (of course) director of Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management.
Well, it's Sunday again and God smiles down upon our shaky ground and yearns for all those Great Yesterdays and is pissed there are no more little surprises in those caramel corn boxes.
@MAG: Last night I saw the Dave Barry headline in the WashPo & decided not to read. Upon your recommendation, I did go thru the first several grafs, and there was this: "The epicenter of the year’s eventfulness was of course Washington, D.C., an endlessly erupting scandal volcano, belching out dense swirling smoke plumes of spin, rumor, innuendo, misdirection and lies emitted by both sides, A and B — or, if you prefer, B and A — filling the air with vicious rhetoric, always delivered with the pious insistence that OUR side, unlike the OTHER side, is motivated not by ego, power-lust, greed or hatred, but by a selfless desire to Work for the American People." Emphasis added.
That's pretty much why I don't read Dave Barry; he pretends he knows what's going on, but he knows only the headlines he reads in the Washington Examiner.
@PD Pepe writes, "Adam Hochschild, writing about the Oregon standoff with the Bundy's, is a perfect example of this kind of Great Yesterdays." Since you didn't link a particular story, and even if you did, it might be one I don't have access to, I can't be certain I'm right here. But my guess is it isn't Hochschild who is the "perfect example," as you write, but the Bundys & their buddies.
Nonetheless, you raise important points about nostalgia. Families may reminisce about "the good old days" in an innocent -- if often inaccurate -- way, but the guys you're writing about evoke a nostalgia for a real or imagined lost power, not for happy vacation trips of yore & roasting marshmallows around a campfire. That power, as well as their solutions for regaining or obtaining that power, are vicious and antidemocratic.
To avoid doing some major housework jobs facing me, I've been watching an Australian series about a women's prison. Most of the characters are fairly nuanced, but they're all living in an environment in which raw power rules. What struck me about the worst of the "bad girls" among these Australian female characters who speak in an accent not our own was how much these "strangers," who also bear no physical resemblance to Donald Trump, nonetheless remind me of him. They're the same kind of horrible human beings.
@Marie: I meant, of course, The Bundy's being the perfect example–-sorry that wasn't clear. What I found amusing was at that standoff the occupiers displayed many "Ranchers' Lives Matter" signs but few were actual ranchers. The top dog here, Ammon Bundy came from a ranching family but for years had run a truck-fleet maintenance company with–-drum roll here–-the help of a $530,000 loan from the Small Business Administration of the federal government he so despised.
You might want to stream a series called "MindHunters"––delving into the minds of serial killers–-many have "mommy issues"–haven't finished watching this but so far it's one that would stall that major housework for awhile.
@Bea McCrab: Yeah, must admit I pretty much skipped over the A to B, B to A sections, but...Barry's follow ups re the Mueller Report were pretty darn funny. It was a long review, Very looong. Can't blame you for passing.
No, the return to Ghana does not sound like something primed for a happy ending. The most likely ending is going to be a culture clash of epic proportions. A shared heritage and race aren't going to be enough to assure a happy ending.
@MAG: Okay, you forced me to read a little further, and there's no question Dave comes up with some good observations: "President Trump, despite suffering from bone spurs, goes to Vietnam for a second summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.... Meanwhile Hillary Clinton continues to hint that she may run again at the urging of many highly respected voices that only she can hear."
The writings of Dave Barry, who works (or worked) out of Miami, has long reminded me of the junior-high-school writings of Marie Burns & L.C. (real name withheld because in much later life L.C. quite oddly accused Marie Burns of stealing her high school year book, which definitely was not true). Anyway, L.C. and I wrote this twice-monthly column where we featured some of our classmates in roles of popular kid lit & TV in situations that 7th-graders find hilarious but fairly tasteful. If L.C. and I had been more avaricious, we could have turned the column into a profit-making endeavor, as our classmates often asked us to include them in the next episode, either as a sort of proof of their own popularity or as evidence to show their parents they were participating in school activities. They would have paid us. I think the columns included sentences like, "Sgt. Lynn Kinsky said, 'Just the facts, ma'am,' when the suspect Charles Middleton avoided her gaze." Despite the fact that our junior high school was in Southeast Florida, Kinsky wound up being a schoolmate of mine at the University of Wisconsin & by chance I ran into her in Southern California about a decade later. Middleton, who was also a smart guy, became president of a midwestern university and had some acquaintance with Joe Biden, as I recall. No doubt L.C. and I gave Kinsky & Middleton their start at greater things. I think Barry totally copied us. I forget whom we totally copied.