The Commentariat -- May 28, 2018
Afternoon Update:
Another A-mazing Coincidence. Sui-Lee Wee of the New York Times: "China this month awarded Ivanka Trump seven new trademarks across a broad collection of businesses, including books, housewares and cushions. At around the same time, President Trump vowed to find a way to prevent a major Chinese telecommunications company from going bust, even though the company has a history of violating American limits on doing business with countries like Iran and North Korea.... Mr. Trump himself has more than 100 trademarks in China. Several United States senators have criticized these trademarks, warning it could be a breach of the United States Constitution and that foreign governments could use Mr. Trump's trademarks to influence foreign policy decisions.... The trademarks are not the only Trump-related deal that took place around the time of Mr. Trump's pledge to save ZTE. On May 15, an Indonesian company called MNC Group, which is partnering with the Trump Organization to build a six-star hotel and golf course in Indonesia, said it had struck a deal with an arm of the Metallurgical Corporation of China, a state-owned construction company, to build a theme park next door to the planned Trump properties." ...
... Erika Kinetz of the AP: "Ivanka Trump’s brand continues to win foreign trademarks in China and the Philippines, adding to questions about conflicts of interest at the White House.... On Sunday, China granted the first daughter's company final approval for its 13th trademark in the last three months, trademark office records show. Over the same period, the Chinese government has granted Ivanka Trump's company provisional approval for another eight trademarks, which can be finalized if no objections are raised during a three-month comment period.... 'Ivanka Trump's refusal to divest from her business is especially troubling as the Ivanka brand continues to expand its business in foreign countries,' Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in an email Monday. 'It raises significant questions about corruption, as it invites the possibility that she could be benefiting financially from her position and her father's presidency or that she could be influenced in her policy work by countries' treatment of her business.'... Ivanka Trump and her father ... have pursued trademarks in dozen of countries. Those global trademarks have drawn the attention of ethics lawyers because they are granted by foreign governments and can confer enormous value."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "Judges appointed by Republican presidents gave longer sentences to black defendants and shorter ones to women than judges appointed by Democrats, according to a new study that analyzed data on more than half a million defendants.... 'These differences cannot be explained by other judge characteristics and grow substantially larger when judges are granted more discretion.'... The new study [by two Harvard law professors] ... find[s] that black defendants are sentenced to 4.8 months more than similar offenders of other races.... Republican appointees are tougher on crime over all, imposing sentences an average of 2.4 months longer than Democratic appointees."
... Video of the rescue showed 22-year-old Mamoudou Gassama climbing up four floors of the apartment building in just seconds to rescue the child, to cheers from onlookers. By the time Parisian emergency services arrived at the building, he had already pulled the child to safety. President Emmanuel Macron invited Gassama to the Élysée Palace on Monday, where he was given a certificate and a gold medal for performing an act of courage and dedication." Mrs. McC: I'm guessing Mali counts as a "shithole country."
*****
Friday I looked up from my work when I heard a bugle playing taps. There was an elderly man standing by the lake across from my house, no doubt practicing for a Memorial Day observance. He reminded me of my father's service & my uncle's during World War II. Then I realized the elderly man was far younger than my father & uncle would be. He may well be a Viet Nam vet. I expect he was about my age. Old has crept up on me; I'm not quite aware of it yet. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
Michael Shear & David Sanger of the New York Times: "The United States and North Korea on Sunday kicked off an urgent, behind-the-scenes effort to resurrect a summit meeting between their two leaders by June 12, racing to develop a joint agenda and dispel deep skepticism about the chances for reaching a framework for a lasting nuclear agreement in so little time. Technical and diplomatic experts from the United States made a rare visit to North Korea to meet with their counterparts, American officials said on Sunday. Before any summit meeting, the American team, led by Sung Kim, a veteran diplomat, is seeking detailed commitments from Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, about his regime's willingness to abandon its nuclear weapons program." ...
... Then Comes the Embarrassing, Childish Buffoonery: In a tweet Sunday night, President Trump confirmed the meetings in the North Korean part of Panmunjom, a 'truce village' in the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas. He also expressed his administration's newfound optimism about the meeting, further embracing the conciliatory language both sides have used since he canceled the planned meeting in a bitterly worded letter to Mr. Kim on Thursday. 'I truly believe North Korea has brilliant potential and will be a great economic and financial Nation one day,' Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter after a second straight day of golf at his Virginia club. 'Kim Jong Un agrees with me on this. It will happen!'" ...
... Anna Fifield of the Washington Post: "A team of U.S. officials crossed into North Korea on Sunday for talks to prepare for a summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un, as both sides press ahead with arrangements despite the question marks hanging over the meeting. Sung Kim, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and former nuclear negotiator with the North, has been called in from his post as envoy to the Philippines to lead the preparations, according to a person familiar with the arrangements. He crossed the line that separates the two Koreas to meet with Choe Son Hui, the North Korean vice foreign minister, who said last week that Pyongyang was 'reconsidering' the talks." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Seung Min Kim of the Washington Post: "President Trump's attempt to blame Democrats for separating migrant families at the border is renewing a political uproar over immigration, an issue that has challenged Trump throughout his presidency and threatens to grow more heated as he imposes more restrictions to stem the flow of illegal immigration. In one of several misleading tweets during the holiday weekend, Trump pushed Democrats to change a 'horrible law' that the president said mandated separating children from parents who enter the country illegally. But there is no law specifically requiring the government to take such action, and it's also the policies of his own administration that have caused the family separation that advocacy groups and Democrats say is a crisis.... As he detailed the 'zero-tolerance' policy during a pair of appearances May 7, Attorney General Jeff Sessions stressed: 'If you don't want your child separated, then don't bring them across the border illegally. It's not our fault that somebody does that.'... 'He [Trump] used DACA kids as a bargaining chip, and it didn't work,' said Kevin Appleby ... of the Center for Migration Studies.... 'So now he's using vulnerable Central American families for his nativist agenda. It's shameless.'"
P.D. Pepe pointed out the New York Times' editors' Guide to Presidential Etiquette in the Age of Trump. Unfortunately, most if it is way worse than eating a New York slice with a fork. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.
Trump Tweets Some Stuff, Ctd. Brent Griffiths of Politico: "... Donald Trump tweeted Sunday that the Russia probe has 'devastated and destroyed' the reputations of people, continuing his weekend Twitter assault against the Robert Mueller investigation.... 'Who's going to give back the young and beautiful lives (and others) that have been devastated and destroyed by the phony Russia Collusion Witch Hunt? They journeyed down to Washington, D.C., with stars in their eyes and wanting to help our nation.... They went back home in tatters,' the president wrote on Twitter." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Rudy Says Some Stuff, Ctd. Tom McCarthy of the Guardian: "... Rudy Giuliani said on Sunday that his repeated imputations of a supposed scandal at the heart of the Robert Mueller investigation -- which Donald Trump calls 'Spygate' -- amounted to a tactic to sway public opinion and limit the risk of the president being impeached. 'Of course we have to do it to defend the president,' Trump's lawyer told CNN State of the Union host Dana Bash, who accused him of being part of a campaign to undermine the Mueller investigation.... 'It is for public opinion,' Giuliani said of his public campaign of dissimulation. 'Because eventually the decision here is going to be impeach or not impeach. Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, are going to be informed a lot by their constituents. And so our jury -- and it should be -- is the American people.'" ...
... Connor O'Brien of Politico: "Asked in an interview with CNN's 'State of the Union' if he believed special counsel Robert Mueller's probe was legitimate, [Rudy] Giuliani responded, 'Not anymore.' 'I did when I came in, but now I see Spygate,' Giuliani told host Dana Bush...." ...
... Cheyenne Haslett of ABC News: "Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said he sees 'no evidence' to support President Trump's claims that the FBI used an informant to gather information on his campaign, but that instead the federal probe was focused on 'individuals with a history of links to Russia that were concerning.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) fact-checked President Trump's tweet claiming that special counsel Robert Mueller's probe is 'phony,' noting that it has led to several indictments and guilty pleas. 'I hate repeating myself Mr. President, but let me remind you again: Special Counsel Mueller's investigation has either indicted or secured guilty pleas from 19 people and three companies -- that we know of,' Schumer tweeted Sunday." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday called on voters to 'throw the bums out' of Congress whom he has accused of trying to help President Trump undermine the special counsel's Russia probe. 'The only thing tha makes this possible is a Congress that is complicit,' Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said on ABC News's 'This Week,' naming several conservative leaders in the Republican Party and accusing 'a weak' Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) of refusing to 'stand up for the independence of the Justice Department.' 'As long as there's a majority in Congress that is willing to do this president's will and as long as we have a deeply unethical president, there's only one remedy,' Schiff said."
Everything Is Going Very Smoothly, Ctd. Jonathan Swan of Axios: "Shortly after word leaked that Kelly Sadler had taken a nasty shot at John McCain, President Trump convened a meeting in the Oval Office for a tiny group of communications staffers, according to sources familiar with the gathering. Sadler, Mercedes Schlapp, Raj Shah, and John Kelly all gathered ... for a conversation with Trump about the leaking problem. They were the only people in the room, though the door to the outer Oval was open.... The president told Sadler she wouldn't be fired for her remark. He added, separately in the conversation, that he's no fan of McCain. Then Trump ... told Sadler he wanted to know who the leakers were. Sadler then stunned the room: To be completely honest, she said, she thought one of the worst leakers was Schlapp, her boss. Schlapp pushed back aggressively and defended herself in the room.... Sadler went on to name other people she also suspected of being leakers. The allegation -- like a previous internal meeting to deal with leaking -- ultimately got leaked to us."
All the Best People, Ctd. David Pittman of Politico: "The White House official who will shape a large part of the administration's drug price plan worked on many of the same issues as an industry lobbyist, raising questions about whether he violated ... Donald Trump's ethics rules. Joe Grogan -- who has sweeping authority over drug pricing, entitlement programs and other aspects of federal health policy at the Office of Management and Budget -- didn't obtain a waiver from a directive Trump issued during his first week in office that imposed a two-year cooling-off period between lobbying and regulating on the same 'specific issue area.' Grogan worked as the top lobbyist for Gilead Sciences until he arrived at OMB last March, dealing with issues including how much federal health programs would pay for its medicines. Gilead was the company that in 2014 effectively set off the drug price controversy with Sovaldi, its breakthrough hepatitis C cure that cost $1,000 per pill and triggered a lengthy and highly critical Senate Finance Committee probe." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Keith H. points to a story that, um, everybody missed. Jim Dean of Veterans Today: "Congress stepped up to the plate with a surprise unanimous vote [in the House] attaching an amendment to a Defense authorization bill stating that 'no law exists which gives the president power to launch a military strike against the Islamic Republic.'" As the National Iranian American Council noted, "The amendment could be stripped out in negotiations with the Senate...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "Across [New Jersey's] Atlantic Coast strip, mayors in nearly every city teamed with council members, conservationists, business leaders and residents to craft resolutions that denounced the [Trump administration's] proposal to widen federal offshore leasing to 90 percent of the outer continental shelf, an effort that began just days after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced the plan in January. They helped put New Jersey at the forefront of resistance to Trump's 'energy dominance' agenda.... Last month, New Jersey became the first Atlantic state to adopt a legal barrier to offshore drilling. Lawmakers passed a bill, signed by Gov. Phil Murphy (D), that prohibits oil exploration in state waters, which extend three miles from shore. An amendment to the law went further, barring the construction of infrastructure such as a pipeline to deliver oil and natural gas from drilling platforms in federal waters that start where state waters end.... And a Republican state senator in Delaware submitted a bill in mid-May that mirrors those of the state's northern neighbors. Some chamber of commerce estimates put the economic impact of coastal Atlantic beach tourism at $95 billion a year."
"The Trump Effect." Noah Berlatsky at NBC News: "Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper ... [on a] study [which] finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.... For instance, people who said they did not want to live next door to immigrants or to people of another race were more supportive of the idea of military rule, or of a strongman-type leader who could ignore legislatures and election results.... The Founders supported democracy as long as it was restricted to white male property holders.... The GOP has increasingly been embracing a politics of white resentment tied to disenfranchisement.... The growing concentration of intolerant white voters in the GOP ... has created a party which appears less and less committed to the democratic project."
Millions of Republicans Are Delusional/Suckers. Kyle Balluck of the Hill: "Almost half of the Republican respondents in a new poll said they believe millions of voters illegally cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election, as President Trump has claimed. Forty-eight percent of Republicans in the HuffPost/YouGov poll said they believe as many as 5 million votes were cast illegally, compared to 17 percent who said they do not. More than one-third of Republican respondents, 35 percent, said they are unsure." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I do think this poll result speaks to the larger point that one has to be delusional (or really, really rich) to vote Republican. Democracy cannot function if one of the two major political parties is fundamentally dishonest.
No, You're Not Getting a Raise. Steve Levine of Axios: "Very few Americans have enjoyed steadily rising pay beyond inflation over the last couple of decades, a shift from prior years in which the working and middle classes enjoyed broad-based wage gains as the economy expanded.... Now, executives of big U.S. companies suggest that the days of most people getting a pay raise are over, and that they also plan to reduce their work forces further.... This was rare, candid and bracing talk from executives atop corporate America, made at a conference Thursday at the Dallas Fed.... To cash in, workers will need to shift to higher-skilled jobs that command more income."
Louis Lucero of the New York Times: "Hoping to thwart a sophisticated malware system linked to Russia that has infected hundreds of thousands of internet routers, the F.B.I. has made an urgent request to anybody with one of the devices: Turn it off, and then turn it back on. The malware is capable of blocking web traffic, collecting information that passes through home and office routers, and disabling the devices entirely, the bureau announced on Friday. A global network of hundreds of thousands of routers is already under the control of the Sofacy Group, the Justice Department said last week. That group, which is also known as A.P.T. 28 and Fancy Bear and believed to be directed by Russia's military intelligence agency, hacked the Democratic National Committee ahead of the 2016 presidential election, according to American and European intelligence agencies."
Way Beyond the Beltway
Angela Giuffrida, et al., of the Guardian: "A standoff over Italy’s future in the eurozone has forced the resignation of the populist prime minister-in waiting, Giuseppe Conte, after the country’s president refused to accept Conte's controversial choice for finance minister. Sergio Mattarella, the Italian president who was installed by a previous pro-EU government, refused to accept the nomination for finance minister of Paolo Savona, an 81-year-old former industry minister who has called Italy's entry into the euro a 'historic mistake'.... Italy has been without a government since elections on 4 March ended in a hung parliament. The country is now expected to go to the polls again in the autumn. The president's move to quash Savona's nomination was unprecedented in recent history...." ...
... Update. Giada Zampano of Politico: "Italy's President Sergio Mattarella on Monday asked Carlo Cottarelli to try and form a government after an attempt to forge a populist coalition failed. Cottarelli, 64, a former International Monetary Fund senior official known as 'Mr. Scissors' for making cuts to public spending, would lead a technocratic government. But he faces an uphill task getting the necessary support. He will face staunch opposition from the two populist forces that won most votes in the March 4 election -- the anti-establishment 5Star Movement and the far-right League. Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, which had previously promised its support to a government backed the president, said Monday it will vote against the new Cabinet."
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Reader Comments (5)
Thank you for your moving Memorial Day imagery, Bea, including your poignant acknowledgment of our advancing years…..
Five years ago, Andrew Bacevich, who lost a son in Iraq, wrote eloquently of a citizen's duty to raise questions and "insist upon accountability":
"Our obligation, transcending even our duty to remember those we have lost, is to insist upon accountability....... That accounting should begin with an acknowledgment of the grievous lapses in leadership that have marred recent American wars. To avert our eyes from evidence of duplicity, recklessness, and incompetence at the top is tantamount to betraying those who have borne the burden of the fight. Much the same can be said of the assumptions and ambitions underlying the policies that find the United States today more or less permanently at war. They require critical scrutiny. We must never forget those who gave their all while in service to the nation. But remembering requires more than unveiling monuments while offering words of consolation. It requires truth-telling, however painful or discomfiting. While remembering, in other words, we must also learn. Otherwise the expenditure of young American lives to no discernible purpose will continue."
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/05/30/while-remembering-our-soldiers-must-also-learn/holxbawqzNUQZ7EjWe4MxO/story.html
This website, and your well read contributors, surely help your readers pursue a citizen's transcending obligation to demand accountability and continued learning on the part of government leaders, however difficult reaching that objective may be.
Thank you all for your continued efforts.
Marco Rubio says that he sees “no evidence” of Trumpy’s latest Lie du Jour, “Spygate”. The typical arc of a Rubio decision to go against the Confederate/Trump/conspiracy grain is as follows: Rubio says “X”. Subsequently, after the little dictator and/or other members of the Party of Traitors weigh in on whatever apostasy he has decided to support, however briefly, Rubio releases a “clarification”. “Did you think I meant ‘X’? Why certainly not. Anyone who knows me understands that I am strongly in favor of ‘not X’. It’s absurd to think otherwise.”
If Marco maintains his Pro-X position past the holiday, it will be momentous indeed. Normally, by now, he would, like Rudy, who will agree that the world is square and follows a trapezoidal orbit in space in order to feel like he is still relevant, have backtracked and sworn up and down that a fantastic lie is the gospel truth.
We shall see.
@ Islander: So glad you quoted Bacevich, a stellar historian and served as a Colonel in the Vietnam War. I was just rereading something he wrote a year ago pertaining to a David Brook's column:
"Rather than confronting the havoc and bloodshed to which the United States has contributed, those who worship in the Church of America the Redeemer keep their eyes fixed on the far horizon and the work still to be done in aligning the world with American expectations. At least they would, were it not for the arrival at center stage of a manifestly false prophet who, in promising to “make America great again,” inverts all that “national greatness” is meant to signify."
And your quote by him today signifies one again his passion for truth, even if it sullies our American myths.
And as always, Islander–-a pleasure to hear from you.
To look across your acreage and see a man near the lake blowing taps on a bugle is a perfect memorial message. If I were a film director I'd have that scene recreated. And age? Creeps by on little cat feet until suddenly it pounces up and hits you squarely in the face––-and you face the fact that you've lived a hell of a long time and the bugle player is your age, not your father's.
I can only imagine (especially after reading that Times piece on presidential etiquette—a bit like a column on good citizenship for Mafia dons—suggested by PD) that had the glorious leader been the one listening to a bugler playing Taps, he’d make fun of the man for being too old, the tune for being too slow and boring, and the bugle as a funny looking thing played by Civil War guys in silly hats. And if he had been out with his golf clubs, he’d send his thugs across the lake to take the instrument away and throw it in the water for daring to interrupt the little dictator’s vital, national security level train of thought: hitting a little ball.
On this Memorial Day (and with a nod to Islander’s fine comment), let’s us ignore whatever daily insults exit the Orange Pie hole and pay no attention to his claims that he too, by building giant, gaudy mausoleums to celebrate his own personal glorification, had sacrificed just as much as a family who had lost a son in combat.
Rather let us remember that the goals and aspirations this execrable excuse for a human being now strives to defile and dishonor, have been thought worthy of the “last full measure of devotion” by so many others who “gave their lives that [this] nation might live” and thus also acknowledge the many more who served and survived but did so with the same devotion.
A heartfelt thanks to them all.
That shithole country guy who supposedly saved that baby? No big deal. If the Glorious Leader had been there, he would have leaped the entire distance in one jump. No one is better than Trump. What’s the big deal? Besides that guy was blackety-black from a blackety-black shithole country. That pussy Macron shouldn’t be praising him, he should arrest him for illegally scaling a white owned building and creating a disturbance and taking credit for something the little dictator could have accomplished a lot faster.