The Commentariat -- November 30, 2019
Mujib Mashal of the New York Times: "After abruptly axing nearly a year of delicate peace talks with the Taliban in September, President Trump put the negotiations back on the front-burner this week in a similarly jolting fashion by seeming to demand a cease-fire that his negotiators had long concluded was overly ambitious. Despite a sense of relief at the prospect of resuming talks to end the 18-year conflict, Western diplomats and Taliban leaders were scrambling to figure out whether Mr. Trump had suddenly moved the goal posts for negotiations. They were particularly confused by his remarks, made during an unannounced Thanksgiving visit to Afghanistan, that the United States was once again meeting with the Taliban to discuss a deal, but that 'we're saying it has to be a cease-fire.' Demanding a cease-fire would amount to a big shift in the American position and require a significant new concession from the Taliban -- one that the Americans have little leverage to extract." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: All easily explained by the maxim, "Trump doesn't know what he's doing." ~~~
~~~ Update. Oops. My mistake. The other maxim applies: "Trump made it up out of thin air" (sometimes rendered, "Trump is talking through his ass again," but I would never be so crude). ~~~
~~~ Karen DeYoung & Susannah George of the Washington Post: "President Trump's confident assertion that the Taliban is ready and even eager for a cease-fire demanded by the United States in Afghanistan's 18-year-old war may be more wishful thinking than reality.... But on Friday neither the Taliban nor the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani indicated that a cease-fire was near, or even being discussed in resumed U.S. negotiations. At the time the U.S.-Taliban talks ended, the two sides were preparing to sign a draft agreement that called for a reduction in violence. But it specifically declared that any discussion of a cease-fire was to be left to follow-on negotiations between the militants and the government in Kabul. In a statement, the Taliban said that remains its understanding. 'We are ready to talk, but we have the same stance to resume the talks from where it was suspended,' Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Post. Ghani spokesman Sediq Seddiqi said Trump's brief visit to Afghanistan was 'important' but that 'we will have to see' whether there has been any change in the status of peace talks."
Susan Simpson of Just Security: "At the heart of the impeachment inquiry, members of Congress may have been mistakenly led to believe that there were two phone calls between ... Donald Trump and Ambassador Gordon Sondland in early September -- with the second call having the possibility of helping the President's case. That's not what happened. There was only one call, and it was highly incriminating. The call occurred on September 7th. In this call, Trump did say there was 'no quid pro quo' with Ukraine, but he then went on to outline his preconditions for releasing the security assistance and granting a White House visit. The call was so alarming that when John Bolton learned of it, he ordered his deputy Tim Morrison to immediately report it to the National Security Council lawyers.... Sondland ... testified [in the public hearing that the September 9 call] was a brief conversation, in which he asked President Trump a single question, '... What do you want from Ukraine? And as I recall, he was in a very bad mood. It was a very quick conversation. He said: I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. I want Zelenskyy to do the right thing.'" [This of course is the claim Trump reiterated, reading from notes on the White House lawn, & which was later set to music, and which Trump has repeated.] Whether due to a faulty memory, or due to intentional deceit, Sondland's testimony about the 'no quid pro quo' call omitted the most critical part of the conversation: President Trump's rejection of the compromise offer for the Prosecutor General to announce the investigations, and his demand that Zelenskyy himself do it. The 'no quid pro quo' call was, in reality, a 'here is the specific quid pro quo I want' call." And it occurred on September 7. Emphasis original. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: This is sort of a follow-on to the Washington Post report also linked here Thursday in which Aaron Davis & others sussed out that a phone call Gordon Sondland said took place on Sept. 9 never happened. As the Post reporters noted, "would have occurred before dawn in Washington. And the White House has not located a record in its switchboard logs of a call between Trump and Sondland on Sept. 9, according to an administration official." Simpson said the Post published its report while her "article was in the publication process." It's a long article, but you can skim it (as I did), and still find her argument convincing -- & damning Trump.
Kylie Atwood of CNN: "Ukrainian officials are discussing ways to improve their country's standing with ... Donald Trump amid the continuing fallout from the impeachment inquiry, two sources told CNN. Those sources, who recently met with Ukrainian officials, said that the Ukrainian government could still announce new investigations which could be seen as politically beneficial to the US President. However, it is unclear what exactly those potential investigations would cover or when they would be announced. One source told CNN that Ukrainian officials recognized that any potential investigations would need to look into current issues and not just those of the past."
Trump Plays President for the Cameras. Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "As Democrats in Congress push to impeach him, President Trump has toured a manufacturing plant in Texas, boasted about economic gains and signed numerous bills. He served turkey to U.S. troops in Afghanistan on Thanksgiving and grieved with the families of fallen service members at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. And next week, Trump is scheduled to jet to London to meet with European allies and be received at Buckingham Palace by Queen Elizabeth II.... Sure, Trump has been consumed by the impeachment proceedings, popping off daily, if not hourly, about what he dubs a 'hoax.' But he and his aides also have staged photo opportunities and public events designed to showcase the president on the job -- a strategy one year out from the election to convince the American people that he is hard at work for them at the same time that Democrats are trying to remove him from office. 'I'm working my ass off,' Trump told a thunderous rally crowd of roughly 20,000 on Tuesday night in Sunrise, Fla. He added: 'The failed Washington establishment is trying to stop me because I'm fighting for you and because we're winning. It's very simple.'"
Kate Sullivan of CNN: "Former Republican congressman Charlie Dent said Thursday some of his former colleagues in the House of Representatives have privately told him they are 'absolutely disgusted and exhausted by the President's behavior.' Dent told CNN's Ana Cabrera on 'Newsroom' that House Republicans are standing with the President at the moment because of base pressure, but said 'they resent being put in this position all the time.' Dent ... cited the Trump administration trying to 'pivot from the Ukraine scandal' by announcing the 2020 G7 summit at the Trump National Doral resort. The decision was later reversed. 'Moving from one corrupt act to another,' Dent said. 'I mean those types of head-exploding moments are just I think infuriating these members and I think they'd like to step out but they just can't because of their base at the moment.'"
To put it mildly, I believe that Mr. Billingslea is one of the worst possible candidates for this critical senior leadership role overseeing human rights policy for the Department of State. -- Thomas J. Romig, retired major general & former judge advocate general of the Army ~~~
~~~ All the Best People, Ctd. Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "President Trump's decision to nominate an official involved in the Pentagon's post-9/11 use of harsh interrogation techniques to the State Department's top human rights post has sparked a standoff in the Senate that has extended a nearly three-year vacancy in a key diplomatic position. Trump's nomination in January of Marshall Billingslea as undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy and human rights raised immediate alarms among the activists and former government officials who believe his confirmation would send a dismal message about the United States' commitment to human rights abroad. A September confirmation hearing has intensified those concerns, with several officials accusing Billingslea of improperly minimizing his role in the interrogation debate inside of the George W. Bush administration. From 2002 to 2003, Billingslea served as the Pentagon's point man on military detainees housed at Guantánamo Bay under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. In that position, according to a 2008 Senate report, he played a role in promoting interrogation techniques that Congress later banned as torture...."~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Many of Trump's nominees are nothing more than human trolls. They are his way of getting in the faces of decent Americans. He especially tries to put these people in positions for which he has no use, like human rights advocate.
Colin Kalmbacher of Law & Crime: "Newly released documents prove the U.S. Census Bureau under President Donald Trump was directly communicating with recently deceased GOP gerrymandering expert Thomas Hofeller -- despite DOJ repeatedly saying that no proof of such association existed.... According to DOJ attorneys, the damning documents were 'inadvertently not produced in discovery'...>. The potential for additional documents implicating administration officials got an additional boost on Tuesday when the House Oversight Committee sued [AG William] Barr over his 'unlawful refusals to comply with duly authorized, issued, and served Committee subpoenas' related to the 'citizenship question' controversy and coverup." --s
U.S. Senate. Greg Bluestein of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia "Gov. Brian Kemp plans to tap financial executive Kelly Loeffler for a U.S. Senate seat next week as he pushes to expand the Georgia GOP's appeal to women who have fled the party in recent years. The appointment would defy ... Donald Trump and other Republican leaders who have repeatedly urged the governor to appoint U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, a four-term congressman who is one of the president's staunchest defenders in Washington. It would end months of jockeying for the seat to be vacated by Republican Johnny Isakson, who is stepping down at year's end because of health issues."
Christopher Miller & Ryan Mac of Buzzfeed: "Ukrainian diplomats are lashing out at Apple after it gave in to Moscow's demands to show Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula as part of Russian territory on its maps and weather apps when accessed from Russia.... However, when viewing Apple Maps and Apple Weather from outside Russia, including Kyiv, those cities and Crimea don't show as being a part of any country. In those apps, which come preinstalled on all Apple iPhones, other global cities are typically listed with an associated country and state or region." --s
Jamil Smith of Rolling Stone: "Directed by Lynn Novick and produced by Sarah Botstein, College Behind Bars [on PBS] profiles the Bard Prison Initiative, a Bard College program that extends its curriculum and has awarded nearly 550 full degrees thus far to matriculated students in six New York State prisons.... [Dyjuan] Tatro entered prison the end of his teenage years and felt that he applied to BPI, one year into his 12-year sentence, because he had 'nothing else better to do.' He would go on to become a member of the Bard debate team that defeated Harvard in a well-publicized 2015 matchup and is now working for BPI as a government-affairs and advancement officer.... Our carceral state, one that prioritizes punishment over the actual correction that the facilities promise, is the America we continue to build. That's why it is so urgent that Bard Prison Initiatives become the rule, not the exception." --s
Pik-Mai Hui & Christopher Torres-Lugo of The National Interest:"We are part of the team that developed [a] tool that detects ... bot accounts on social media. Our next effort, called BotSlayer, is aimed at helping journalists and the general public spot these automated social media campaigns while they are happening.... At Indiana University's Observatory on Social Media, we are uncovering and analyzing how false and misleading information spreads online.... We also develop maps of how online misinformation spreads among people how it competes with reliable information sources across social media sites.... We receive many requests from individuals and organizations who need help collecting and analyzing social media data. That is why ... we combined many of the capabilities and software tools our observatory has built into a free, unified software package, letting more people join our efforts to identify and combat manipulation and misinformation campaigns." --s
Beyond the Beltway
Kentucky, Etc. Stephen Wolf of the Daily Kos: "GOP leaders in the Kentucky legislature are pushing a bill that would effectively remove Democratic Gov.-elect Andy Beshear's control over the state's Department of Transportation, the latest move in an accelerating trend of Republicans stripping power from Democratic governors before they can take office.... [W]ith Republicans firmly in charge of the legislature, it can become law even if Beshear were to veto it.... It also follows similar lame-duck maneuvers by Republican legislators in Michigan and Wisconsin in 2018 and North Carolina in 2016 -- all of which came only after the GOP lost elections for governor in each state.... The GOP establishment has given its full support to these power grabs in the states." --s
Way Beyond
Europe. Malcolm Chalmers of RUSI: "At the 2014 NATO summit in Wales, all the member states who were spending less than 2% of their GDP on defence agreed to 'halt any decline in their defence budgets' and 'to aim to increase defence expenditure in real terms as their GDP grew'. Both these aims have been achieved. Every one of NATO's 28 member states (excluding Iceland) has increased its defence budget in real terms since 2014. The median real-spending increase has been 31%. This is by far the most rapid, NATO-wide, increase in defence spending in the Alliance's history.... The number of European states meeting the 2% target has increased from two (Greece and the UK) to seven (these two, plus Poland, Romania and all three Baltic republics)." Includes lots of stats. --s
Iraq. Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "Pressured by an expanding protest movement and a rising death toll, Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi of Iraq said Friday that he would submit his resignation to Parliament, taking the country into greater uncertainty and possibly months of turmoil ahead.... Deep seated anger over corruption and Iran's influence in Iraqi politics are the major drivers of the protests across Iraq." The AP story is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
U.K. BBC: "Two members of the public have died and another three people were injured in a stabbing attack at London Bridge, the Met Police's commissioner has said. Cressida Dick told a press conference the stabbing attack, which has been declared a terrorist incident, began at an event at Fishmonger's Hall. Within five minutes of being called officers confronted the suspect - who was shot dead by police - she said. The suspect was wearing what is thought to have been a hoax explosive device." The Guardian is updating developments. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Rob Evans, et al. of the Guardian: "Eleven wealthy American donors who have given a total of more than $3.7m (£2.86m) to rightwing UK groups in the past five years have been identified, raising questions about the influence of foreign funding on British politics. The donations have been given to four British thinktanks that have been vocal in the debate about Brexit and the shape of the UK's future trade with the EU, and an organisation that claims to be an independent grassroots campaign representing ordinary British taxpayers." --s ~~~
~~~ Guy Faulconbridge of Reuters: "British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday he would not say how many children he had, saying that he would not 'put them on the pitch' ahead of the Dec. 12 election." Mrs. McC: Because there's nothing more politically advantageous that hinting you have secretly fathered children.
News Ledes
CNN: "Millions of holiday travelers will be met with rain, snow or a messy mix of both this weekend as a winter storm moves through the Midwest and into the Northeast. More than 40 million people from California to Maine were under winter weather alerts Saturday morning, said CNN meteorologist Haley Brink. The winter storm, located over the central US at that time, brought with it heavy snow to the northern Plains and Midwest, Brink said. She added, high wind warnings and wind advisories cover 20 million people from New Mexico to Nebraska where winds could gust up to 85 mph."
CNN: "A Kentucky company is recalling bacon and ready-to-eat turkey products over misbranding and undeclared allergens. Blue Grass Quality Meats is recalling 121,083 pounds of the products because they contain soy, an allergen that's not declared on the product labels, the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service announced Friday. The bacon and turkey breast items -- all Cajun style -- were produced on various dates between October 29, 2018 and November 19, 2019. The labels of recalled items can be found here. They ... were shipped to retail locations in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia, where the turkey products may have been offered as retail-sliced deli product."
AP: "Usman Khan was convicted on terrorism charges but let out of prison early. He attended a' Learning Together' conference for ex-offenders, and used the event to launch a bloody attack, stabbing two people to death and wounding three others. Police shot him dead after he flashed what seemed to be a suicide vest. Khan is gone, but the questions remain.... Britons looked for answers Saturday as national politicians sought to pin the blame elsewhere for what was obviously a breakdown in the security system, which had kept London largely free of terror for more than two years." ~~~
~~~ Guardian: "A convicted murderer was among ex-prisoners and members of the public who grappled with and grounded the London Bridge knife attacker before police arrived. One man was armed with a fire extinguisher and another a 5ft narwhal tusk as people at the scene surrounded the attacker, who was eventually pinned to the ground."
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Reader Comments (7)
At least we're deporting the criminals first. Must be a secret m 13 member:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hard-rock-hotel-collapse-worker-who-survived-new-orleans-hotel-collapse-deported-2019-11-29/
Someone else's take on the story I referenced above.
Not M 13, after all. Just a fisherman.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/opinion/construction-workers-deportation.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
And the story linked in this op-ed with numbers on workplace deaths during our Pretend presidency are interesting in themselves.
The Pretender and Bolsonaro:
Brothers of different mothers.
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/11/30/brazils-president-accuses-actor-dicaprio-of-financing-amazon-fires/23871163/
....accompanied by the now obligatory tag, "with no evidence."
Reports of Republican lawmakers "disgusted" with Trump but too afraid to voice a peep should be obliged to be tagged as "[chickenshit] Republican......"
It's what Republicans do, Safari.
Pretend virtue if it's easy.
Let it be known that you're against abortion (for those who can't afford to travel to a sane state, anyway); then eliminate health insurance and cut food stamps for the poor.
@Ken Winkes: Then go to church on Sunday and thank god you're such a good boy.
And the "good boy" goes to church, listens to the sermon that touts largesse of the spirit and the purse, sings a few songs of love and glory of the creator and his sacrificed son for our sins. He then saunters over to the nearest restaurant and has a breakfast of fried eggs and ham and shoots the shit with some of his cronies. He waits a week. On that next Sunday he attends a different church in which an abortion provider is a member and as that doctor is walking down the aisle to his seat our "good boy" of great love of god and goodness takes out a gun and shoots the doctor in the head. Finally, "Tiller the baby killer" is dead.
I recall when I heard this news–-I recall being sickened by it.
Last week there was a hearing on the abortion issue. I was gratified that so many women were involved and that abortion was explained in great detail as not just a right for any woman who is not ready to have a child but for serious medical reasons. I feel so strongly about this issue that if I were to confront someone who opposes this procedure I'm afraid I'd lose it as much as I'd try to maintain my composure and my forever "treat your opponent with dignity."
I want to thank Marie for inserting that video re: Prince Phillip's mother Alice. Finally took the time yesterday to watch it––fascinating! Then last night started watching the third season of "The Crown" and got as far as the Margaret bit: the scene where the P.M. is telling the Queen the details re: the off-color limericks between Margaret and LBJ. is hilarious. Interesting contrast between LBJ's crudeness and Trump's inane antics––power players both, but one is strictly working for himself.