The Commentariat -- November 24, 2019
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Ashley Parker & Dan Lamothe of the New York Times: "Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper asked for the resignation of Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer on Sunday after losing confidence in him over his handling of the case of a Navy SEAL accused of war crimes in Iraq, the Pentagon said. Spencer's resignation came in the wake of the controversial case of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who was accused of war crimes on a 2017 deployment. He was acquitted of murder but convicted in July of posing with the corpse of a captive. Esper asked for Spencer&'s resignation after learning that he had privately proposed to White House officials that if they did not interfere with proceedings against Gallagher, then Spencer would ensure that Gallagher was able to retire as a Navy SEAL, with his Trident insignia. Spencer's private proposal to the White House -- which he did not share with Esper over the course of several conversations about the matter -- contradicted his public position on the Gallagher case, chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement." An Axios report is here. ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Everyone who comes in contact with Donald Trump turns to dust.
In case you were wondering, "Whatever does the White House have to hide?" here's a teensy taste: ~~~
~~~ ** Josh Dawsey, et al., of the Washington Post: "A confidential White House review of President Trump's decision to place a hold on military aid to Ukraine has turned up hundreds of documents that reveal extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification for the decision and a debate over whether the delay was legal, according to three people familiar with the records. The research by the White House Counsel's Office, which was triggered by a congressional impeachment inquiry announced in September, includes early August email exchanges between acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House budget officials seeking to provide an explanation for withholding the funds after President Trump had already ordered a hold in mid-July... One person briefed on the records examination said White House lawyers are expressing concern that the review has turned up some unflattering exchanges and facts that could at a minimum embarrass the president.... Mulvaney's request for information came days after the White House Counsel's Office was put on notice that an anonymous CIA official had made a complaint to the agency's general counsel about Trump's July 25 call to [Ukraine President] Zelensky...."
Hong Kong. Ken Moritsugu & Eileen Ng of the AP: "Partial returns early Monday from Hong Kong's local elections showed that pro-democracy candidates won more than a third of the seats in balloting that was seen as a test of support for the anti-government protests that rocked the Chinese territory for more than five months. Among the winners in Sunday's vote that drew a massive turnout were former student leaders and a candidate who replaced prominent activist Joshua Wong, the only person barred from running in the election. Rally organizer Jimmy Sham, who was beaten by hammer-wielding assailants last month, also triumphed, as did a pro-democracy lawmaker who had part of his ear bitten off by an assailant. So far, pro-democracy candidates have won 159 out of 452 seats in 18 district council races. Hong Kong's largest pro-Beijing political party suffered the biggest setback, with more than 100 of its 182 candidates defeated."
Chandelis Duster & Kristen Holmes of CNN: "House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff left the door open to the possibility of more hearings or depositions in the impeachment inquiry said that Democrats will not 'wait months and months while the administration plays a game of rope-a-dope in an effort to try to stall.' Schiff indicated on Sunday in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union" that Democrats would not be taking former national security adviser John Bolton to court for his testimony. Schiff also said Bolton should have the 'courage' to testify like former National Security Council Russia expert Fiona Hill and others. And if he chooses not to testify, Bolton will have to explain to the country 'why did he wait to tell' his story in his upcoming book rather than to the public 'when it mattered.'"
David Gura of NBC News: "Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is back home and resting after being hospitalized on Friday. Ginsburg, 86, has been released after being admitted with chills and a fever, a spokesperson for the Supreme Court said on Sunday."
U.K. Robert Booth of the Guardian: "Prince Andrew is to withdraw from scores of charities in a move that appeared designed to protect the monarchy from further humiliation over his association with Jeffrey Epstein. Buckingham Palace confirmed on Sunday that the Duke of York is 'standing back from all his patronages' but indicated he still hopes to return to a public role at some point by saying the move was only temporary." ~~~
~~~ No Birthday Bash for Andy. Nick Enoch of the Daily Mail: "The Queen has scrapped plans to host a party for Prince Andrew to mark his 60th birthday in February. Instead, the monarch is said to be arranging a small family dinner for the Duke, according to The Sunday Times. His birthday is on February 19."
Emma Newburger & Brian Schwartz of CNBC: Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg entered the 2020 presidentia race on Sunday following weeks of speculation about whether he would join the crowded Democratic primary. [A] television ad touts Bloomberg's record as mayor and promises 'to rebuild the country and restore faith in the dream that defines us: where the wealthy will pay more in taxes and the middle class get their fair share; everyone without health insurance can get it and everyone who likes theirs, keep it; where jobs won't just help you get by but get ahead.... And on all those things, Mike Bloomberg intends to make good,' the ad said. The new ad is part of his $31 million television ad buy." ~~~
~~~ Update. The New York Times story is here.
~~~~~~~~~~
Admiral, Navy Secretary Revolt Against Commander-in-Chief*. Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "The secretary of the Navy and the admiral who leads the SEALs have threatened to resign or be fired if plans to expel a commando from the elite unit in a war crimes case are halted by President Trump, administration officials said Saturday. The Navy is proceeding with the disciplinary plans against the commando, Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, who counts Mr. Trump as one of his most vocal supporters. The threats by the Navy secretary, Richard V. Spencer, and Rear Adm. Collin Green are a rare instance of pushback against Mr. Trump from members of the Defense Department. Chief Gallagher was accused of shooting civilians, murdering a captive Islamic State fighter with a hunting knife in Iraq, and threatening to kill SEALs who reported him, among other misconduct. His court-martial ended in acquittal on those charges. But the Navy ultimately demoted the chief, who was convicted of one charge: bringing discredit to the armed forces by posing for photos with the teenage captive's dead body. Last Friday, Mr. Trump reversed that demotion, angering Navy officials, who had little choice but to accept the reversal. Nonetheless, they continued with their plans to expel Chief Gallagher from the unit. On Thursday, the president intervened again in the case, saying that the commando should remain in the unit.... A White House spokesman did not respond to requests for comment." ~~~
~~~ Or Not. Update. Spencer Is Not That Principled. Karen DeYoung & Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post: "Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer said Saturday that he would comply with any order by President Trump regarding the case of a Navy SEAL whose continuance in the elite unit is being reviewed by the service after a controversial murder charge. 'I work at the pleasure of the president,' Spencer said, denying reports that he has threatened to resign. 'I do not interpret what the president does. I do what he says.' But Spencer said he did not consider a presidential tweet to be an order.... 'The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher's Trident Pin,' the SEAL insignia, Trump tweeted on Thursday. 'This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!'" ~~~
~~~ Courtney Kube & Carol Lee of NBC News: "Military leaders hoping to keep the Secretary of the Navy from quitting lobbied ... Donald Trump aboard Air Force One to stop intervening in the case of a Navy SEAL accused of murder, say five current and one former military and defense officials.... Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist, Army Chief of Staff General [James] McConville, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, and Sgt. Major of the Army Michael Grinston spoke with the president about the process on Air Force One Thursday night...." ~~~
~~~ New York Times Editors: "That Mr. Trump would pardon men accused or convicted of war crimes should come as little surprise, given that he campaigned on promises to torture the nation's enemies and kill their families. Mr. Trump in May became the first modern president to pardon a person convicted of war crimes, when he pardoned Michael Behenna, a former Army lieutenant, who had been convicted of killing a prisoner in Iraq.... Absolving people who commit war crimes does great harm to society in general, and the men and women who served honorably.... A nation has to know that military action being taken in its name follows morally defensible rules -- that soldiers do not, for instance, kill unarmed civilians or prisoners. To excuse men who have so flagrantly violated those rules -- to treat them as heroes, even -- is to cast the idea of just war to the winds. It puts the nation and veterans at risk of moral injury, the shattering of a moral compass."
Maybe Everything You Need to Know about Donald Trump. Eric Levitz of New York: "Donald Trump said Friday that Xi Jinping would have 'obliterated' Hong Kong, and killed 'thousands' of its people, if he had not personally asked the Chinese leader to refrain from mass murder. Trump went on to call Xi 'a friend of mine,' and an 'incredible guy.'"
Zeke Miller of the AP: "Vice President Mike Pence worked to reassure the United States' Kurdish allies in an unannounced trip to Iraq on Saturday, the highest-level American trip since President Donald Trump ordered a pullback of U.S. forces in Syria two months ago. Flying in a C-17 military cargo aircraft, Pence landed in Irbil, capital of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, to meet with Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani. The visit was meant to hearten the United States' regional partners in the fight against the Islamic State group after the U.S. pulled troops northern Syria, leaving America's Kurdish allies there to face a bloody cross-border Turkish assault last month. Asked by reporters if the United States was facing a sense of betrayal from Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish allies over Trump's actions in Syria, Pence said both groups, including Syrian Kurdish forces 'who fought alongside us,' had no doubts about the U.S. commitment to them. 'It's unchanging,' Pence said." Mrs. McC: Right.
Charles Pierce of Esquire: "This was the Friday news dump to end all news dumps.... Beyond the obvious conclusions -- that the president* is guilty as hell, and he is using as his primary defense a disinformation project devised in Moscow, and, in the interest of advancing the latter, he tried to shakedown a vulnerable ally under literal siege by the military forces of the government that dreamed up the president*'s primary alibi -- this sudden avalanche of information fairly screams out for the inquiry to play out as it will play out, and that short-circuiting its process is both bad detective work and bad politics. Just on Friday, we learned that Nunes and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were roped into this mess, too." --s
Edward Wong & Ken Vogel of the New York Times: "Internal State Department emails and documents released late Friday further implicate Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a campaign orchestrated this year by President Trump and his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to pressure Ukraine for political favors." Besides proving Pompeo & Rudy Guiliani spoke in the month before Pompeo ordered Ambassador Marie Yovanovtich out of Ukraine, "the documents also show that the State Department sent members of Congress a deliberately misleading reply about Ms. Yovanovitch's departure after they asked about pressure on her.... The documents, and recent congressional testimonies in the impeachment inquiry, tie Mr. Pompeo closely to efforts by Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani to persuade the Ukrainian government to announce investigations that could help Mr. Trump politically.... The documents bolstered testimony delivered Wednesday by Gordon D. Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union.... He told lawmakers ... that Mr. Pompeo had full knowledge of the campaign and even approved certain hard-line tactics.... The documents, testimony and interviews with Mr. Giuliani paint a portrait of a secretary of state who not only had intimate knowledge of the pressure campaign against Ukraine and the effort to undermine and remove a respected ambassador, but took part in her ouster despite warnings about the campaign from lawmakers and a half-dozen former ambassadors to Ukraine." See yesterday's Commentariat for related stories.
Marty Johnson of the Hill: "Rudy Giuliani ... elaborated on his 'insurance policy' Saturday, tweeting that he has files in his safe 'about the Biden Family's 4 decade monetizing of his office.' 'TRUTH ALERT: The statement I've made several times of having an insurance policy, if thrown under bus, is sarcastic & relates to the files in my safe about the Biden Family's 4 decade monetizing of his office,' Giuliani tweeted. 'If I disappear, it will appear immediately along with my RICO chart,' he added.... Earlier in the day, the former New York mayor appeared on Fox News, where he said that he has 'insurance' in case Trump decides to throw him under the bus. 'I've seen things written like he's going to throw me under the bus. When they say that, I say he isn't, but I have insurance,' Giuliani told Fox News's Ed Henry."
Chris Sommerfeldt & Dave Goldiner of the New York Daily News (Nov. 22): "One of the Florida businessmen who worked with Rudy Giuliani on his hunt for Ukrainian dirt on Democrats has turned over a trove of 'hard evidence' to impeachment investigators -- including photos and videos, one of his lawyers said Friday. Lev Parnas, who was criminally charged last month in a sweeping campaign finance scheme that overlaps with the House impeachment inquiry, had so much evidence it had to be sent to investigators in several batches, the attorney, Joseph Bondy, told the Daily News. Bondy said he has also tried to schedule a time for Parnas to testify under oath before the House Intelligence Committee about the 'first-hand knowledge' he says his client has about President Trump's bid to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden's family and other Democrats before the 2020 election. However, impeachment investigators have yet to take up Parnas' offer, even though the subpoena he was issued last month demanded he come in for a closed-door deposition on Oct. 10, Bondy said. Parnas couldn't make that deposition because he was in custody in Virginia awaiting arraignment in New York on the campaign finance charges, Bondy said."
Brent Larkin of Cleveland.com: "Jim Jordan ... [is] now the second most contemptible human being in the entire U.S. government.... And now it's fitting that Republicans have given this seven-term sycophant a starring role in the televised House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump. The assignment comes as Jordan is being credibly accused by some of knowingly turning a blind eye to ... sexual assaults and ...rapes of student[s].... That makes Jordan an ideal candidate to lead the defense of a malignant president who has bragged about physically abusing women and who has been accused by two dozen women of sexual assault or misconduct.... When Jordan slithers out from under his rock each morning, dons a shirt and tie - sans the jacket, lest he be mistaken for Joe McCarthy - his life's work is to besmirch everything America stands for in service of Donald Trump.... Jordan is the ideal bootlicker." Read the whole post. --s
Evan Semones of Politico: Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), "the top Democrat on the House armed services committee, said Saturday that Republican Rep. Devin Nunes is likely to face an ethics investigation over allegations he met with an ex-Ukrainian prosecutor at the center of the impeachment inquiry into ... Donald Trump.... CNN reported late Friday that [Lev Parnas,] an associate of Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, has information on meetings Nunes allegedly had with former Ukrainian prosecutor general Victor Shokin.... Nunes called the CNN report 'demonstrably false' in an interview with Breitbart." ~~~
~~~ Tareq Haddad of Newsweek: "Devin Nunes ... is reportedly threatening to sue CNN and The Daily Beast after the publications reported damaging allegations that could implicate him in the ongoing impeachment probe the committee is currently conducting. Nunes ... faced calls to recuse himself and even to be investigated after it was alleged that he himself met with Ukrainian officials in order to discuss digging up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden. If accurate, the claim would implicate Nunes in the events his committee is investigating.... Nunes told Breitbart News that he now plans to sue the publications, although he did not specify what was he believed to be factually incorrect with any of their reporting."
Ellen of Crooks & Liars: "[Friday] night, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs lobbed a softball to Press Secretary (and obvious liar) Stephanie Grisham that all but asked her to shoot down [John] Bolton's accusation [that the White House had refused to give him access to his personal Twitter account.]... Rather than refute the accusation, Grisham suggested Bolton's 'advanced age' is to blame[.]... If your Spidey senses aren't already tingling from Grisham's dodgy and outright ridiculous smear about a man who has been active on Twitter for almost a decade and has more than 847,000 Twitter followers, then The New York Times should set you straight: Bolton had turned over control of his account to the White House. He was no longer able to access that account shortly after tweeting his accusation that Trump had lied about firing him. According to the Times, the White House had evidently changed his password and verifying email address." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Bolton is two-and-a-half years younger than Grisham's very stable genius boss Donald Trump, who seems to be able to handle a Twitter account.
Andrew Taylor of the AP: "Negotiations on a package of spending bills to fund the federal government have produced a key breakthrough, though considerably more work is needed to wrap up the long-delayed measures. Top lawmakers of the House and Senate Appropriations committees on Saturday confirmed agreement on allocations for each of the 12 spending bills, a step that allows negotiations on the $1.4 trillion budget bundle to begin in earnest to try to pass the measures by a Dec. 20 deadline. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., announced the agreement on Saturday through aides."
Presidential Races 2016, 2020
AP: "Michael Bloomberg will not accept political donations if he runs for president and he will not take a salary if he wins, according to senior aides who offered new details on Saturday about the New York billionaire's plans to navigate his wealth as he marches toward a formal 2020 announcement.... In recent days, he has created a presidential campaign committee wit the Federal Election Commission and qualified for the primary ballot in at least three states. Bloomberg's team has reserved more than $30 million in television ads set to begin running Sunday in several primary states."
Matthew Chapman of the Raw Story: "On Saturday, Deepa Seetharaman of the Wall Street Journal profiled James Barnes, a former Facebook employee who was credited by the Trump campaign as their inside man and 'MVP' at the social network -- and who is now fighting to defeat the president in 2020. 'James Barnes left Facebook this spring, and said he is now dedicated to using the digital-ad strategies he employed on behalf of the Trump campaign to get President Trump out of office in 2020,' wrote Seetharaman. 'Mr. Barnes, who had been a lifelong Republican, has registered as a Democrat and recently started working with a progressive nonprofit called Acronym, where former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe is on the board.'" The WSJ story is here.
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore on Friday night after experiencing chills and fever earlier in the day, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said on Saturday.... Justice Ginsburg's symptoms abated after treatment with intravenous antibiotics and fluids, [the spokeswoman] said, adding the justice expected to be released from the hospital as early as Sunday morning."
William Broad of the New York Times: "The world's first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945, in the New Mexican desert -- a result of a highly secretive effort code-named the Manhattan Project, whose nerve center lay nearby in Los Alamos. Just 49 months later, the Soviets detonated a nearly identical device in Central Asia, and Washington's monopoly on nuclear arms abruptly ended. How Moscow managed to make such quick progress has long fascinated scientists, federal agents and historians. The work of three spies eventually came to light. Now atomic sleuths have found a fourth. Oscar Seborer, like the other spies, worked at wartime Los Alamos, a remote site ringed by tall fences and armed guards. Mr. Seborer nonetheless managed to pass sensitive information about the design of the American weapon to Soviet agents. The spy fled to the Soviet Union some years later; the F.B.I. eventually learned of his defection and the espionage but kept the information secret. His role 'has remained hidden for 70 years,' write Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes in the current issue of Studies in Intelligence, the C.I.A.'s in-house journal; their article is titled 'On the Trail of a Fourth Soviet Spy at Los Alamos.'"
Way Beyond the Beltway
U.K. Adam Blenkov of Business Insider: "Boris Johnson's Conservative Party election campaign received a six-figure donation from [Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of the Russian oligarch Vladimir Chernukhin] and ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The prime minister's party received £5.7 million in donations in the first week of the campaign, mostly from senior business figures and hedge funds, more than 25 times the amount raised by the opposition Labour Party.... Chernukhin previously paid £160,000 for a tennis match with Johnson and £135,000 for a night out with former Prime Minister Theresa May.... The committee looked into donations from nine Russian sources.... Johnson blocked the report [by Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee about potential Russian interference in recent UK elections], which was set to be published before the election campaign, because of fears that the information would damage his chance of winning the UK general election next month, sources told The Times." --s
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@Ken Winkes: Here's the Bill Mauldin essay I mentioned the other day & which I retrieved from the NYT archives (what they call the "Times Machine"). If the link doesn't work for you, it was in the December 8, 1957, issue of the NYT Magazine. It's on pages 35 & 37 of the magazine, but it looks as if the Times has it linked as pp. 306 & 307 (for that day's paper) in its archives. On the right, there's a + box to increase the size of the picture.
Mauldin takes a long time to get to the point, but it's Mauldin, so the windup is entertaining.
I would copy it for you if I could & send it to you personally, but it's a pdf (I think), and it can't be copied.
I would have been 13 when first I read it.
Bea,
Thanks. Was able access it and even read it with a lot of zooming.
You're right. It took Mauldin a while but he got there. A crackerjack ending. Good cartoon, too.
@Ken Winkes: I remember whining that Mom forced me to read the NYT, so I was surprised a couple of years ago to find -- after extensive searching -- that the essay she made me read was such an easy read -- and by Bill Mauldin.
She gave me quite a few NYT reading assignments, but the only other one I remember was one about the controversies surrounding Kashmir, also from the magazine. Sadly, the only thing I gleaned from the story was where the word "cashmere" came from. ("Cashmere" is probably a word I also learned from the Times, as I used to comb the fashion ads in the Sunday Times.) Still, that probably gives me a greater knowledge of Kashmir than Donald Trump has, & Donald thought he was smart enough to referee the current dangerous fight between Pakistan & India over Kashmir.
The Banal Stories of a Crumbling Empire:
Somewhere deep in the bowels of the White House, Ivanka Trump's eyes alit with blue light as her heart raced. With daddy ranting and raving mad in the background, she types away furiously. Time is of the essence, and national security is on the line. Signing out of her airbrushed Twitter account, she logs in to John Bolton's and sabotage...
"According to the Times, the White House had evidently changed his password and verifying email address."
Deep in the woods at Camp David, the campfire pops and ignites Matt Gaetz's marshmallow. Mark Meadows' bellowing laugh sparks the others. Gaetz' licks the gooey ball right off the stick, burns his tongue, and knocks over his Bud Light can. Jim Jordan snorts and smirks, 'Shit Matt, spilled your beer you damn klutz!' Gaetz feigns a smile & looks down into the flames with a sheepish gaze. The other members know they touched a nerve. Self-reflecting silence ensues.
"The casual itinerary includes making s’mores over the campfire, going hiking, shooting clay pigeons and schmoozing with Trump officials, some of whom stay overnight with lawmakers."
Once returned and rested from the grueling hike, Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) sat down for a rustic dinner of charred steak, bread and potatoes, a favorite of Dear Leader. The ketchup and mayonnaise jars each came with gold-plated lids, a sign of the times. Spirits are gay as the alcohol flows. Mick Mulvaney's cheeks are rosy after his 5th glass of Franzia, slapping the table with glee recounting how easy it is to hoodwink their entire electoral base. 'No more accountability, ever!' Applause erupts. Having barely pierced her potato, Ms. Wagner takes the phone: 'Ann, I just want you to know, you're the greatest woman ever. Bigly. Your orange skin is almost as fine as mine, but some Botox wouldn't hurt. I bet those legs used to look good, too. Vote no on impeachment.'
"During dinners, Trump has called in to compliment members personally."
Great Mauldin article, thanks.
The draftee in the cartoon is KP "Outside Man", which appointment one received from the Mess Sergeant after each meal and after cleaning pots and bake pans. Before lunch, OM would use pressure hose, foot nozzle, and brush, to clean the metal garbage cans so bright as to receive peeled potatoes, which he peeled using an electric abrasion tub which rubbed the skin off (there's your high tech novelty).
After each meal OM would sort edible garbage, recyclables, and grease into those cans, and a local farmer would pick up the slop for his pigs. Post engineers removed the metal and local garbage.
OM did lots of other chores too. This just relates to the cartoon.
KP was one day out of 8 weeks in basic, but I can still recall much of it after 50 years.
OM was paid about $3.25 a day as an E-1.
Pigs got the edible waste, metal and grease was recycled, and labor was almost free. The real waste was that the draftee was there at all, not in what the Army used him for that day.
Also ... Mauldin's son was an Army helicopter pilot in VN about ten years later. His family served.
This is Sunday, so thought to pass along my comment on Natural Law, which is after all akin to godliness, which appeared in this morning's paper.
Call it another godless Sunday Sermon.
"A recent letter to the editor cites nature’s laws to question the “cost” of protecting certain animal species and returning grizzly bears to the North Cascades. But saying something is a law of nature doesn’t make it one.
Often an appeal to “natural law” is no more than a way of excusing doing nothing about a situation. Why bother, we say, it’s entirely out of our hands.
While some natural laws like gravity and those that govern the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane concentrations and earth’s average temperature are nature-ordained, most laws are human creations. Because human-generated laws reflect choices societies have made, people, not nature, are responsible for their effects. Is slavery OK? Western societies once said yes. Now they say no.
So-called “laws" of economics present another case in point. We often justify decisions by saying what might be best for people or the planet costs too much, but we frequently rig such analyses by leaving out secondary costs. The costs associated with fossil fuel use--everything from environmental degradation to what we spend on our military (now protecting Syrian oil fields)—is only one incalculably large instance. The “value” we assign to things is most often a choice, not a law.
We also fail to account for the immense social and environmental costs of the misinformation fed to us by businesses and some politicians. Exxon, for instance, decided that spending thirty million dollars deliberately misleading the public about the harmful effects of fossil fuels was worth the price (nytimes.com) they paid.
Just as the whole truth can get in the way of profit, it can also destroy an argument.
In his appeal to the laws of nature, the letter writer claims the North Cascades never supported two hundred grizzlies.
But research indicates they did (conservationnw.org/news-updates/report-grizzly-bears-historically-inhabited-north-cascades/)."
As far as Mauldin's discussion of american anti-intellectualism goes, I think the recent impeachment inquiry shows that very smart girls are subjected to a double whammy still: they are less "female," and therefore scary, as well as "weird."
Regarding Fiona Hill, she is "formidable," not "brilliant," indicating that one should watch out - she might hurt them or make them feel small somehow. And on the other hand, the same words out of the mouth of another high level man would have had everybody obeying every word.
I absolutely loved how she wouldn't let anyone get close to the concept that she was saying things the way she did only because she was a "girl." Instead she will be ignored, of course, because what she said was so true.
@Victoria: Good point. Of course many men are fearful or at least put off by "formidable" women. Look at that remark Trump made (up) last week about how Melania said, "Oh, darling, that's wonderful!" Trump is hardly alone is expecting women to be meek & compliant & thrilled by their husbands' most prosaic remarks & decisions. It's their view of a woman's "place," and it will be a long time before 51% of men change that view. Sure, acceptance of women as equally intelligent & powerful has improved with each generation -- Trump being from the dark ages -- but there will long be a residual sense that women should take roles subservient to men, both at home & in the workplace.
There's a bit of an exception for widows who take over their late husband's affairs -- Katherine Graham of the WashPo, for instance -- but they still are supposed to defer to men & when they don't, modern-day John Mitchells will declare, "She's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer."
I'm not a fan of Hillary Clinton's, but no sane person could think she was less qualified to be president than Trump or less able to do the job. Yet I expect many men voted against her, not because they thought a woman couldn't handle the job, but because they were afraid she could; that is, that she is "formidable."
Marie: how fortunate you are to have had a mother that "forced" you to read certain pieces in the Times––not welcomed by you, perhaps, at the time but we know now that our mothers were bound and determined to give us a leg up. Your conversation with Victoria spells out exactly why.
The other day I was reading a bio of someone and the author described the father of this person as a general manager of some company; the mother who had been a active member of an agency that helped WWII veterans ( this was revealed later in the article) as "A housewife." This term has always gotten under my skin––to describe a woman this way is not only demeaning but silly. A wife in a house––good lord!
@safari: Enjoyed your scenario about the camp fire folderol –-the only thing missing were the beans and the gas.
May RBG rise above all her physical problems and continue to persevere. The very thought of her leaving the bench at this time is, frankly, terrifying.
Some clever business leaders have discovered that you can upgrade your staff by hiring women. For what you are paying your male staff you can hire better qualified women.
Sounds like Trump is angling for another shot at that elusive Nobel Peace Prize. Saving thousands in Hong Kong. I wonder if he will tell PM Abe to nominate him again.
Not as good as the Mauldin op-ed, but not a bad letter to the Pretender.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/24/politics/read-navy-secretary-richard-spencer-resignation-letter/index.html