The Commentariat -- December 5, 2019
Afternoon Update:
"Don't Mess with Me.... " ~~~
~~~ Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had just concluded her weekly news conference Thursday and was about to exit the room when a reporter shouted out a question. 'Do you hate the president, Madam Speaker?' James Rosen, a [winger] reporter for [righty-right] Sinclair Broadcast Group, called out from a seat in the front row. Most times, Pelosi ignores questions shouted at her in the hallways and briefing rooms of the Capitol. But Rosen's query appeared to strike a nerve with Pelosi, who stopped in her tracks, turned to face the reporter and delivered an extraordinary rebuttal." Watch it. "The exchange appeared to do little to change Republicans' messaging on the matter. Minutes after Pelosi's news conference concluded, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) sent out a tweet in which he declared, 'Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats are clearly ... blinded by their hate for the President.'"
~~~ Marc Caputo of Politico: "Joe Biden lashed out at an Iowa town hall Thursday after a man suggested the former vice president helped his son get a sweetheart deal in Ukraine and was 'selling access' like ... Donald Trump does.... The 83-year-old man said he had two problems with the 77-year-old Biden: that he's 'too old' and the Ukrainian issue.... [When the man brought up Biden's Ukraine dealings, Biden walked up to him menacingly & said,] 'You're a damn liar, man. That's not true. And no one has ever said that.'... As the two talked over each other, a staffer tried to take the man's microphone. But Biden waved him away and let the man keep the mic. 'Let him go. Let him go,' Biden said.... Returning to the issue of his age and fitness, Biden then laid down the challenge: 'Let's do push-ups together here, man. Let's run. Let's do whatever you want to do. Let's take an IQ test.' The man was speechless."
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~~~ Nicholas Fandos & Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked the House of Representatives on Thursday to begin drafting impeachment articles against President Trump, pushing ahead with a rapid timetable that could set the stage for a deeply partisan vote before Christmas to charge him with high crimes and misdemeanors." A brief Politico story is here.
Nicholas Fandos & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The House Judiciary Committee opened an epic partisan clash over the impeachment of President Trump on Wednesday at a hearing where Democrats and Republicans offered up dueling legal scholars who disagreed over whether the president's conduct rose to the constitutional threshold to warrant his removal from office." ~~~
~~~ Michael Shear of New York Times: "Three constitutional scholars invited by Democrats to testify at the first impeachment hearing before the House Judiciary Committee said that President Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine for political gain clearly met the historical definition of impeachable offenses. Wednesday's Judiciary Committee hearing.... Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who was invited to testify by the committee's Republicans, offered the lone dissent, arguing in his opening statement that Mr. Trump should not be impeached." Shear outlines key moments of the hearing. This article is an update of a highlights post first linked yesterday. ~~~
~~~ Adam Edelman of NBC News: "Pamela Karlan, a professor at Stanford Law School and a former Justice Department official in the Obama administration, said the 'the very idea that a president might seek the aid of a foreign government in his re-election campaign would have horrified' America's Founding Fathers. 'But based on the evidentiary record, that is what President Trump has done,' she added.... Michael Gerhardt, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, added that 'the record compiled thus far shows that the president has committed several impeachable offenses, including bribery, abuse of power in soliciting a personal favor from a foreign leader to benefit his political campaign, obstructing Congress and obstructing justice.'... Later, responding to questions, Gerhardt said, 'If what we are talking about is not impeachable, nothing is impeachable.'" ~~~
~~~ Here's Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law professor, delivering his opening statement:
~~~ The Purpose of Impeachment Is Donald Trump. Jonathan Allen of NBC News: "... Ultimately, three of the witnesses portrayed Trump as abusing the powers of his office for personal gain -- and in contravention of U.S. interests -- in ways envisioned by the founding fathers when they gave Congress the authority to remove the chief executive. The reason to impeach Trump isn't to punish him, law professors Pamela Karlan of Stanford, Noah Feldman of Harvard and Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina said, but to prevent further damage.... They all said Trump's actions met the threshold for 'high crimes and misdemeanors' and for 'bribery' under the Constitution's impeachment clause.... Gerhardt said "the record compiled thus far shows that the president has committed several impeachable offenses, including bribery, abuse of power in soliciting a personal favor from a foreign leader to benefit his political campaign, obstructing Congress and obstructing justice." ~~~
~~~ Politico has texts of the prepared opening statement by Wednesday's witnesses. (Also linked yesterday.)
Ken Vogel & Benjamin Novak of the New York Times: "Even as Democrats intensified their scrutiny this week of Rudolph W. Giuliani's role in the pressure campaign against the Ukrainian government that is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, Mr. Giuliani has been in Europe continuing his efforts to shift the focus to purported wrongdoing by President Trump's political rivals. Mr. Giuliani ... met in Budapest on Tuesday with a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who has become a key figure in the impeachment inquiry. He then traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday seeking to meet with other former Ukrainian prosecutors whose claims have been embraced by Republicans, including Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, according to people familiar with the effort. The former prosecutors, who have faced allegations of corruption, all played some role in promoting claims about former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a former United States ambassador to Ukraine and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in 2016.... Mr. Giuliani is using the trip, which has not been previously reported, to help prepare more episodes of a documentary series for a conservative television outlet promoting his pro-Trump, anti-impeachment narrative." ~~~
~~~ Here's a HuffPost story. ~~~
~~~ MEANWHILE, Back in the U.S.A. Erica Orden, et al., of CNN: "Federal prosecutors in New York who are investigating Rudy Giuliani and his associates have deepened their focus on Ukraine's state-run oil-and-gas company, having interviewed its CEO, Andriy Kobolyev, and seeking in recent weeks to speak to a key US embassy staffer in Ukraine, according to Kobolyev's attorney and people familiar with the matter. Prosecutors have interviewed Kobolyev, the head of Naftogaz, which stands at the center of an attempted scheme by Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman to replace Kobolyev with someone who could be more favorable to their own business interests.... Prosecutors have also made contact recently with the US embassy official, Suriya Jayanti, a foreign service officer based in Kiev.... Prosecutors' interest in the activity surrounding Naftogaz indicates a possible expansion of their case against Parnas and Fruman, who have been indicted for an alleged scheme to funnel foreign money into US elections, and demonstrates they are looking closely at possible crimes related to foreign bribery. And it comes as prosecutors probe Giuliani's business interests."
** John Stoehr of RawStory: "The [phone call] records [in the House impeachment report] suggest in the most granular detail yet that the president of the United States is the leader of an international criminal conspiracy to defraud the American people.... They provide an illustration, in miniature, of what a conspiracy looks like, and why it's morally and legally wrong for the head of the world's oldest democracy to engage in such conduct.... On the same day Joe Biden announced his presidential campaign, John Solomon wrote a falsehood-laden column 'alleging that Ukraine had planted Russia collusion allegations against the Trump campaign,' according to the [Washington] Post.... The very same day, April 25, Giuliani received a call from '-1' (i.e., Trump). Giuliani then called Sean Hannity at Fox. A while later, Trump appeared on Hannity's show to comment on Solomon's report in The Hill. 'That sounds like big, big stuff,' he said.... Coincidence isn't the right word to describe a president's dirty lawyer [Giuliani] getting a dirty prosecutor [Yuriy Lutsenko] to tell a dirty reporter [Solomon] the president's Democratic rival is dirty, and then getting a dirty TV host [Hannity] to ask the president to comment on the dirty reporter's dirt. The right word to describe all that is conspiracy." --s
Sarah Burris of the Raw Story: "A new ethics complaint was filed Wednesday against Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) after it was revealed he was coordinating with ... Donald Trump's attorney and recently indicted associates to garner 'dirt' on former Vice President Joe Biden. 'The House Intelligence Committee's Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Report dated December 3, 2019 used a subpoena to obtain phone records which plainly demonstrate that ranking member Devin Nunes (R-CA) has an actual conflict of interest with an ongoing impeachment hearing he oversees,' the filed complaint filed by The Democratic Coalition stated. 'That is because Rep. Nunes is currently engaged in overseeing an investigation in which it appears he is a fact witness, and which may examine his own activities and meetings with agents and lawyers of the President who solicited foreign election assistance, as well as potentially into his own contacts with foreign government officials.'"
Prosecutor Shoots Down Barr's Conspiracy Theory. Matt Zapotosky & Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "The prosecutor handpicked by Attorney General William P. Barr to scrutinize how U.S. agencies investigated President Trump's 2016 campaign said he could not offer evidence to the Justice Department's inspector general to support the suspicions of some conservatives that the case was a setup by American intelligence, people familiar with the matter said. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's office contacted U.S. Attorney John Durham, the prosecutor Barr personally tapped to lead a separate review of the 2016 probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, the people said. The inspector general also contacted several U.S. intelligence agencies.... Durham informed Horowitz's office that his investigation had not produced any evidence that might contradict the inspector general's findings on that point.... That could rebut conservatives' doubts -- which Barr has shared with associates in recent weeks -- that Horowitz might be blessing the FBI's Russia investigation prematurely, and that Durham could potentially find more, particularly with regard to [a] Maltese professor [whom winger conspiracy theorists falsely believe was a U.S. asset]." TPM has a summary of the WashPo report.
Never-Trumper Rick Wilson in Rolling Stone: "Be honest: The words 'traitor' and 'treason' don't have the sting they once had; they've been devalued from mis- and over-use by this president. For Donald Trump, any opposition, either personal, ideological, or political is treason.... Which is a shame, because America is in the midst of a treason boom right now, and more than a few people in Trump's immediate orbit -- and Trump himself -- richly and actually deserve the title of traitor, and the treason inherent in their acts and words is apparent." Wilson gives many examples. --s
Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump on Wednesday called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 'two-faced' after a viral clip circulated showing Trudeau gossiping about the president's conduct at bilateral NATO meetings a day earlier." Mrs. McC: Trump has cancelled his press conference, maybe because Trudeau, Johnson & Macron laughed at him & hurt his fee-fees. (Also linked yesterday. Yesterday's Commentariat includes video of the exchange among Trudeau, et al.) ~~~
~~~ Update. Kevin Breuninger of CNBC: "... Donald Trump on Wednesday abruptly canceled a press conference that was scheduled to cap a contentious trip to England for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 70th anniversary meeting.... Hours before the press conference was set to start, video emerged of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau caught on a hot mic mocking Trump.... None of the politicians in the hot-mic video, which emerged on social media Tuesday evening, mentioned Trump by name. But Trudeau reportedly said later Wednesday that it was Trump's surprise announcement of the location for next year's Group of Seven summit that made 'his team's jaws drop to the floor.' Trump revealed Tuesday that the 2020 G-7 summit will be held at Camp David in Maryland, weeks after he retreated from a plan to host it at his own Miami golf resort." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Shay Khatiri in the right-wing, anti-Trump Bulwark: "... Donald Trump cancelled his press conference at the NATO summit, called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau two-faced, and abruptly left the summit altogether after video surfaced of Trudeau, Boris Johnson, and Emmanuel Macron talking about the American president with utter contempt. Trump seemed surprised that, after three years of crapping all over America's allies, they do not hold him in high regard.... Our relationship with our allies is not out of altruism. It is because we benefit from it. Being the hyperpower can be burdensome, but it is, all things considered, a bargain at twice the price. The United States is, far and away, the biggest beneficiary of the global order that it has implemented.... Trump is dismantling this equilibrium through imprudence and pettiness.... The creators of this order never dreamed that one day America's leader would be so foolish as to seek to throw these alliances away...." See also Nicholas Burns' commentary, linked below.
~~~ Move Along, Donald. There are many interpretations of what was going on between Queen Elizabeth & her daughter Princess Anne as Donald & Melanie Trump held up a reception line & monopolized receivers Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Duchess Camilla & NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. It appears to me that the Queen gestures to move the Trumps along & beckons Anne to help. Anne, who at some point during the reception also joined Canadian PM Justin Trudeau as he made fun of Trump, shrugged at her mother in a way that suggests to me she did not intend to assist in getting rid of the uncouth Americans. You may read the exchange differently. Maybe you think Elizabeth & Anne find Donnie delightful & thought it was great he was holding up other guests. Fine. We weren't there; we don't know. Thanks to Anonymous for the lead:
David Herszenhorn of Politico: "... Donald Trump warned Germany to up its military spending, or face unspecified trade sanctions. Trump issued the warning on Tuesday while in London for a NATO leaders' summit, and ahead of a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel scheduled for early Wednesday afternoon." (Also linked yesterday.)
Nicholas Burns in the Atlantic: "The not-so-closely guarded secret at NATO headquarters is allied officials are privately relieved that, rather than holding a full-fledged summit over two days, the leaders are holding just three and a half hours of formal discussions. That limited Trump's opportunities to blow up the proceedings, as he has done in other major meetings with European and Canadian leaders.... Article V [of the NATO treaty] has been invoked just once in NATO history, when the European allies and Canada vowed to come to our defense after the 9/11 attacks.... Trump appears entirely indifferent to the clear, decisive advantage over Russia and China that the United States enjoys because of our European ties. We have 28 allies in NATO, as well as treaty allies in Japan, South Korea, and Australia in the western Pacific, who will defend us when our backs are against the wall. This is the great power differential we enjoy with Moscow and Beijing." (Also linked yesterday.)"
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "A few months ago Donald Trump decided to suddenly yank our troops from Syria. We'd already beaten ISIS, so why not? It was time to get out. But the Wall Street Journal reports today that apparently things have changed: 'The Trump administration is considering a significant expansion of the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East, including dozens more ships, other military hardware and as many as 14,000 additional troops to counter Iran, U.S. officials said." (Emphasis [probably] Drum's.) You might want to read Drum's May 2016 post on the Blob, which he also links. The Raw Story has a short summary of the WSJ story.
Julia Ioffe of GQ: "Last year ... Lewis Lukens, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in London, visited a pair of English universities where he spoke about the importance of international cooperation ... between the U.K. and America.... A week later, Lukens says, his boss, the U.S. ambassador Woody Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune and a Trump political appointee, told him that he was done, firing Lukens from his post seven months ahead of when he was scheduled to leave for a new assignment.... The reason? Lukens says he had unwittingly committed a fatal error in his speech: He had mentioned former president Barack Obama.... This incident ... offers a stark example of the politicization of the foreign service under Trump. It's also a grim illustration of how the administration -- through three years of attempted budget cuts, hiring freezes, and grotesquely personal attacks -- has eviscerated the country's diplomatic corps and put highly sensitive matters of national security in the hands of politically appointed novices." Read on. --s
** But We Say "Merry Christmas!" in the U.S.A. Lola Fadulu of the New York Times: "The Trump administration, brushing aside tens of thousands of protest letters, gave final approval on Wednesday to a rule that will remove nearly 700,000 people from the federal food-stamp program by strictly enforcing federal work requirements. The rule, which was proposed by the Agriculture Department in February, would press states to carry out work requirements for able-bodied adults without children that governors have routinely been allowed to waive, especially for areas in economic distress. The economy has improved under the Trump administration, the department argued, and assistance to unemployed, able-bodied adults was no longer necessary in a strong job market.... More than 140,000 public comments were submitted on the rule that was made final on Wednesday, and they were overwhelmingly negative." The NBC News story is here.
Ian McMacDougall of ProPublica: "The logistical challenges [of Trump's inhumane border policies] were daunting, but as luck would have it, Immigration and Customs Enforcement already had a partner on its payroll: McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm.... [McKinsey] proposed cuts in spending on food for migrants, as well as on medical care and supervision of detainees.... The consultants ... seemed focused solely on cutting costs and speeding up deportations -- activities whose success could be measured in numbers -- with little acknowledgment that these policies affected thousands of human beings.... [T]he consulting firm's sway at ICE grew to the point that McKinsey's staff even ghostwrote a government contracting document that defined the consulting team's own responsibilities and justified the firm's retention, a contract extension worth $2.2 million." --s
GOP consultant Evan Siegfried in an NBC News opinion piece: "As the president's misguided worldwide trade war rages, the latest salvo is the United States Trade Representative's further proposed 100 percent tariff on several goods imported from France as a response to its taxes on digital companies -- and it's Americans who are paying and will continue to pay the price. The president and his supporters keep insisting, incorrectly, that the countries (China, France, etc.) from which tariffed products come are the ones paying their cost, but ... tariffs are never paid by the country on which they are imposed. Instead, their cost -- initially paid by the company producing the good -- is passed on to ... the consumer." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Siegfried is all upset that the price of his favorite French wine is about to go up. I have news for him: so is the price of a California alternative. If a $20 bottle of French wine goes up to $40, that California vintner is not going to keep selling her product for $18 or $20. She's going to raise her price to what the market will bear: not $40, but $25 or $30. To borrow a line from Siegfried, "That is basic capitalism."
Presidential Race 2020
Mrs. McCrabbie: Maybe negative campaign ads turn you off. Here's one, and I think it's the best ad I've seen this campaign season:
~~~ Josh Taylor of the Guardian: "... Joe Biden has sought to capitalise on world leaders' private ridicule of Donald Trump at the Nato summit, releasing a video montage including similar moments which soon went viral on Twitter. Within hours the video, posted by the Democratic frontrunner on Wednesday evening, amassed close to 2m views, and more than 21,000 retweets. By comparison, Trump's video about his Nato trip had 1.4 million views and 14,600 retweets in the space of 12 hours.... CNN reported Biden's video was posted 30 minutes after Trump landed back on US soil, in keeping with Biden's policy of not criticising the president while he is overseas.... Trump later tweeted that 'I got along great with the Nato leaders' and accused the 'fake news media' [of] trying to 'belittle my very successful trip to London for Nato'."
Congressional Races 2020
Steven Shepard & Ally Mutnick of Politico: "Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who participated in last month's impeachment hearings, said Wednesday he won't seek reelection next year. Heck, 67, was first elected in 2012 to represent a district southwest of Seattle.... Heck ... wrote that the process of compiling the intelligence committee's recent impeachment report had left him 'discouraged' about continuing to serve in Congress. 'The countless hours I have spent in the investigation of Russian election interference and the impeachment inquiry have rendered my soul weary,' Heck wrote. 'I will never understand how some of my colleagues, in many ways good people, could ignore or deny the president's unrelenting attack on a free press, his vicious character assassination of anyone who disagreed with him, and his demonstrably very distant relationship with the truth.'"
Yelena Dzhanova of CNBC: "Defying ... Donald Trump, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday tapped financial services executive Kelly Loeffler to fill the state&'s soon-to-be vacated Senate seat." ~~~
~~~ BUT There's Something about Loeffler Even Trump Can Understand. Max Greenwood of the Hill: "Georgia's soon-to-be Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R) will spend $20 million of her personal fortune on her bid to hold on to her Senate seat next year, according to a person familiar with her plans. Loeffler, the multimillionaire CEO of an Atlanta-based financial services firm, was appointed on Wednesday to replace retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson (R) in 2020. Her appointment sets up a special election next year that is expected to draw both Republican and Democratic challengers."
Marisa Endicott of Mother Jones: "Senate Republicans voted Wednesday to confirm Sarah Pitlyk, who has argued against in vitro fertilization and surrogacy and touted the (debunked) 'eugenic origins of the birth control movement,' to a lifetime judgeship on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.... The American Bar Association unanimously determined Pitlyk was 'not qualified' for the judgeship.... Pitlyk clerked for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and wrote an opinion piece for Fox News defending him against the sexual assault allegations he faced during his confirmation process.... Pitlyk has made a career out of anti-abortion and reproductive health litigation." --s The Washington Post story is here.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the Guardian: "Colin Kaepernick sent a tweet on Thanksgiving [advocating for Indigenous causes] and the white-wing media wants to make sure you know about it.... So, why the panicky attacks on Kaepernick? Clearly, there's something much more insidious going on here: the sustained attempt to steal Kaepernick's political voice by characterizing him as un-American. The Black Grinch who wants to steal White Christmas American values.... History has taught us over and over that religious values are quickly abandoned when they conflict with economics or traditional social norms.... But really it's how conservative America has always treated African American athletes who speak out whether it's Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, or any of the others.... For much longer than 50 years people have been ordering truth-tellers to shut up and punishing them when they refuse.... But they sure will keep on trying as long as they get paid to pander to those who wrap themselves in the pretty colors of the flag rather that the bold words of the Constitution." --s ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Abdul-Jabbar himself often has been on the receiving end of such criticism.
Beyond the Beltway
Kentucky. Ryland Barton of WFPL (Kentucky Public Radio): "During a series of interviews on talk radio shows Wednesday morning, outgoing Republican Gov. Matt Bevin said that he lost his race for reelection because the Democratic Party 'harvested votes in urban communities.'... Vote harvesting refers to collecting absentee or mail-in ballots in order to sway an election. The practice is illegal in some states, but Kentucky is one of 27 states that allows absentee ballots to be returned by a designated agent.... During the interview on 55KRC, Bevin said that he was encouraged by his supporters on Election Day, but that Democrats brought 'more less-informed people' to the polls." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie Translation: "Black people are so ignorant they'll hand over their ballots to crooked Democrats who happen by." You know, Matt, the percentage of Kentuckians identifying as black is less than 8 percent. The percentage of whites is more than 87 percent. That does kinda suggest that a whole buncha "more-informed" people from "non-urban communities" voted for Andy Beshear, too. You sniveling racist pig.
Way Beyond
Brazil. Matt Sandy of the New York Times: "... Brazil's space agency reported that in one year, more than 3,700 square miles of the Amazon had been razed -- a swath of jungle nearly the size of Lebanon torn from the world's largest rainforest. It was the highest loss in Brazilian rainforest in a decade, and stark evidence of just how badly the Amazon, an important buffer against global warming, has fared in Brazil's first year under President Jair Bolsonaro. He has vowed to open the rainforest to industry and scale back its protections, and his government has followed through, cutting funds and staffing to weaken the enforcement of environmental laws. In the absence of federal agents, waves of loggers, ranchers and miners moved in, emboldened by the president and eager to satisfy global demand." With photos.
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project: "What do a Swedish Hells Angels boss, an Iranian state oil company, the Italian mob, and a fake Gambian bank have in common? The answer: A company services firm called Formations House, hidden behind the doors of one of London's most exclusive addresses. For years, the handsome Edwardian terrace at 29 Harley Street was a front for a vast back-office operation run out of Pakistan that claims to have churned out some 400,000 companies for clients around the globe. A cache of the family-run company's internal records obtained by the anti-secrecy group Distributed Denial of Secrets, and shared with OCCRP and other media outlets, provides unprecedented insight into Formations House's global reach, and the criminal activities of some of its clients around the world." --s
News Ledes
NBC News: "A U.S. sailor fatally shot two civilian Defense Department employees and wounded a third at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii before killing himself, military officials said. Rear Admiral Robert Chadwick said the civilian shipyard worker who was wounded was stable. The gunman has been tentatively identified as an active duty sailor assigned to a submarine, he said."
AP: "Hiring in the United States jumped last month to its highest level since January as U.S. employers shrugged off trade conflicts and a global slowdown and added 266,000 jobs. The unemployment rate dipped to 3.5% from 3.6% in October, matching a half-century low, the Labor Department reported Friday. And wages rose a solid 3.1% in November compared with a year earlier. Investors cheered the report, sending the Dow Jones industrial average up more than 270 points in early trading."
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Reader Comments (7)
We need to be clear-eyed about what is happening with Giuliani in Ukraine at this very moment colluding with Russian interests to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. Firstly, the fact that he is doing it, right now, is astounding. But more importantly, will be its outcome.
In line with the extremely effective 'Clinton Cash' smear job by Peter Schweizer (financed in large part by rightwing billionaire dark money groups), Giuliani appears to be in the process of putting together some sort of documentary/film version of 'Clinton Cash' redux to smear Biden, this time financed in large part by Ukrainian/Russian dirty money through Dmytro Firtash (who financed Lev, Igor & Rudy). I can nearly guarantee that the rightwing fever swamps, orchestrated at least in part by Drumpf's henchmen and obviously keeping him in the loop, are mobilizing their resources and henchmen to produce some slick Bannon-style B-movie short film that will be timed to drop at some opportune time (around the convention, shortly before the election...) and will explode among actively complicit conservative media outlets. By Election Day, every brain dead Fox News viewer and low-information voter is going to be wondering just how corrupt Biden really is.
Team Drumpf got caught red-handed in Plan A, and without hesitation have moved on to Plan B (or maybe the video idea was always part of the plan). The point being: even DURING the impeachment hearings decrying potential foreign interference in our elections, the machinations are building for the same outcome, in broad daylight as is the style of the current mafia presidency.
Despite the Democrats best attempt to blow the whistle, there will be foreign interference in the coming election, orchestrated by the White House. It's in the works, right now. And it might very well secure a second term.
@safari: Yeah, poor ole Trump is probably flummoxed as to why the "perfect" Ukraine gambit has blown up into such a big deal when all the other stuff he's been doing is far worse.
Hard to know what to do.
Rise to the right wing bait and attempt to reason with the unreasonable or just let 'em go on their own sorry path?
Made a brief comment on a Times op-ed yesterday in response to someone who was perfectly happy with the Pretender, had swallowed the Biden-Ukraine conspiracy concoction whole and was predicting the Pretender's re-election because he was doing all his voters had asked of him.
My comment dealt only with the facts of the Pretender's ask: he didn't want an investigation of corruption, only an announcement of one and that if he were truly interested in finding corruption, a mirror would have served...
.....but I did not ask what the Pretender has done the writer liked so much. Was it the children in cages? The tax cuts for the rich? The environmental rapine? The Putin boot-licking. The shattered foreign policy? The thousands of lies? The Pretender's blatant personal corruption? What could it possibly be?
I didn't ask him, as I have refrained from asking others, because he might have told me and then I'd have known that there was yet another person I would henceforth consider somehow irretrievably lost to the human race I thought I knew, and would have even more reason to wonder what is wrong with nearly half of the people I must continue to live among.
And that is not a good feeling.
Marie,
Yeah, I’m guessing Al Capone entertained similar thoughts while he was doing the laundry at Alcatraz, about his conviction for tax evasion. “Tax evasion? What the fuck. And I skated on murder, prostitution, bootlegging, gambling, loansharking, and leg breaking?”
At least he wasn’t a traitor.
Oh, Ken,"not a good feeling" is an understatement for what I am feeling––it's more like despair. After spending most of the day yesterday watching the hearing (hooray for the three professors, especially Karlan, who. like Fiona Hill hit it out of the ball park) and witnessing the absolute hissy-fittings from the republicans whose hypocrisy knows no bounds I realized that when it comes to fighting for the rights––whatever they may be––the Republican Party is the one with the teeth––their playbook is lined with the down and dirty dealings –– nothing is too nefarious for their taste.
Then this morning after reading about Lewis Luken's firing, Sarah Pitlyk's confirmation ( to think a person like this has been confirmed to a life long stint on the bench is outrageous!), and the story about Kaepernick––––heaped on top of cutting food stamps, Fatty's foray with those that are still laughing at him, etc, etc. is infuriating.
But I come back to Ken's comments re: those "others" who have bought the lies, who see what they want to see and nothing seems to shake their resolve. If we reminded them that the national GOP has long been a disaster, that every Republican administration from Reagan onward has crashed the economy and exploded deficits; their track record on health care is one of failure; their handling of national security has been catastrophic; their criminality and corruption is scandalous to name a few negatives. To top off this long list we could ask Ken's reader to give us a list of positives that Trump has delivered––how has he made this country so great? However–-Ken knows like we know that the great divide is wider than we thought and unless or until something catastrophic ( climate?) comes along to tighten our bonds and our morals we remain in this House Divided.
One of the most obvious bits of presumption circulating around the R's attacking the three constitutional scholars who presented a compelling and categorical case for impeachment of the criminal and traitor known as Donald Trump is their unshakeable belief (or convenient contrivance) that anyone who gave a cent to a Democratic candidate in their life, or who ever wrote an article or voiced an opinion about the Dear Leader that was not panderingly panegyrical and abjectly laudatory, is QED incapable of rendering a sound judgment on his actions.
They think this for several reasons. First, none of them will ever admit that anything Trump does or has done, or will do, could possibly, in any way, be anything but perfect and good. Second, their side will say anything to win--lie, cheat, subvert, misdirect, attack--which leads to the third reason, ergo, everyone must be equally untruthful, deceitful, and conniving in the service of a cause. There is no honesty, no truth, no justice. It's all what they say it is.
I didn't hear much yesterday, but I did listen briefly to some insulting jamoke raking the scholars not vetted for ideological purity by the Party of Traitors, over the coals for having either contributed to a Democratic candidate in the past, or having appeared on a panel alongside others who were critical of the Traitor in Chief. It sounded as if he truly believed he was closing the net on a bunch of murderers, proving, without a doubt, that they were guilty of the supreme sin of not bowing down to Trump and looking the other way while he makes off the democracy itself, likely to be hung up in some black hole of a trophy room alongside stuffed carcasses of animals shot by Uday and Qusay. "Look at this horrible creature I killed! Aren't I great?"
Clearly, the R's have no case. Zero. But they are all well versed in the Fox-Trump tactic of repeating lies over and over again so as to brainwash the weak of mind and to bludgeon everyone else.
It's a sad time for America.
The Barron Bloviation
Ever notice the vehemence exhibited by wingers whenever they catch someone they consider an enemy in some kind of bind (actual as opposed to invented)? Man, it's like attack of zombies. So, okay, Pamela Karlan used Barron Trump's name as part of a little play on words. Was it tasteless? Well, not really tasteless, but it wasn't right. It was the sort of little witticism that should be left in the living room or at the kitchen table. But to hear the wingnuts tell it, she inflicted a merciless attack on a helpless child.
And now we're all hearing about how horrible it is for anyone to refer to a president's offspring in any but the most glowing or anodyne terms.
Oh, you mean like when wingnut avatar Rush Limbaugh referred to Chelsea Clinton as a dog? The way Sean Hannity attacked the Obama girls for going on vacation necessitating a secret service detail to go along? Has anyone heard Hannity, or any of the screamers, complain about Uday and Qusay and Javanka jetting around the world to line their pockets, dragging along a contingent of secret service and spending piles of taxpayers' dollars? How about all the confederate commentators and other assorted assholes who referred to the Obama kids as monkeys? Oh, I guess they deserved that, right?
Yes, Karlan's quip was out of line, but at least she wasn't personally attacking or insulting Barron Trump, making fun of how he looks or comparing him to an animal.
But confederates have to have something with a basis in the real world to complain about (they have so few) that they're all on board with this one.