I missed this story last week, whose "public importance" pertains here as well as there:
On Tuesday, Brazilian federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and founding editor at the Intercept Brazil, for his explosive reporting on
corruption at the very highest levels of Brazil’s government.
The public importance of these stories was staggering. For example, one of the revelations exposed how a well-known judge named Sergio Moro had rigged a trial to jail the country’s most popular political figure in the run-up to the presidential election, clearing a path to victory for Jair Bolsonaro, who then promptly rewarded Moro with control of the Ministry of Justice and Public Security….
Yet as ridiculous as these charges are, they are also dangerous — and not only to Greenwald: They are a threat to press freedom everywhere.
If Trump wins reelection, we should expect similar, politically motivated prosecutions of concocted charges in the United States.
From an upcoming documentary:
Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.
— Hillary Clinton, on Bernie Sanders
Yesterday, at a rally in Sioux City, Ia., joined by mainstream vote-getters AOC and Michael Moore, Bernie equated "the Republican establishment" and "the Democratic establishment."
Third Way's Matt Bennett complained to Politico that the media "let [Sanders] get away with murder." Unlike the media's damaging interrogations of Elizabeth Warren over her Medicare-for-all financing, "they let him bluster past hard questions."
"The Democratic establishment" should sit on this demagogic windbag, making it clear that if he's the Democratic nominee he won't be seeing any Democratic establishment money should he persist in bashing the party.
The odds of Independent Sen. Sanders ever winning the Democratic nomination are still slim, so I'm not worried. Not much, anyway. But to have this self-aggrandizing assclown running around the country and bashing the party that its eventual nominee is a part of, is just too much.
A draft of John Bolton's book is out, and the draft says precisely what everyone expected it to say: that the House managers are correct; that Trump is a liar; that Trump actually believes crackpot theories about Ukraine and DNC servers; that Rudy Giuliani, for personal benefit, is running Trump's Ukraine policy; and that Trump is a national security threat.
The White House has the power to postpone "or even kill the book’s publication or omit key passages," reports the Times. And Trump is already ramping up Nixonian headfakes. In Davos, Switzerland, he told reporters that "the problem with John is it’s a national security problem. He knows some of my thoughts. He knows what I think about leaders. What happens if he reveals what I think about a certain leader and it’s not very positive?"
Our assumption is that the foreign leader would merely think that that's par for the course; Trump is always smarter, more intuitive, and above all more of a bumbling example of the Dunning-Kruger effect than any other world leader.
Tweeted Trump yesterday: "If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book."
This of course established the official line for Trump's propaganda minions to disseminate. Sean Davis, founder of The Federalist, knew what to tweet, which Trump promptly retweeted in a Dick-Cheney-Iraqi-nuclear-weapons-Meet-the-Press kind of way: "Bolton is trying to get rich off of a lie- and leak-fueled campaign."
Also tweeted by Davis' fellow Federalist, Mollie Hemingway, and retweeted by Trump: "This is obviously book promo coordinated with compliant media, yes. But an additional word of skepticism: these *particular* folks have a pattern of overpromising and underachieving with their 'bombshell' anti-Trump book roll outs."
If anti-Trump books indeed overpromise and underachieve, wouldn't the White House want Bolton's book sped to the publisher and bookstores, rather than permitting observers to think the worst? But let's not try to be rational when confronting Trump Inc.'s cognitive processes.
The rest of the story is no real story at all: "Republicans … [have been] mostly silent" about the contents of Bolton's book and their implications for the impeachment trial. And, "most lawmakers say the chances of 51 senators agreeing to call witnesses are dwindling, not growing," the Times adds.
And that's the way it is. Goodnight, Walter.
In "Anyone but Trump? Not so Fast," the conservative Bret Stephens retrieves the gauntlet of an impossible challenge and, predictably, comes up short, since the challenge is indeed impossible. Perhaps Stephens merely means his Sunday column to be light intellectual exercise for the reader, or maybe as a series of straw men to be toppled, so that only a sturdier resolution can be left standing. Either way, it's impossible to responsibly argue that anyone but Trump could possibly be more catastrophic than Trump.
Stephens sets up his targets to be whacked, one-two-three, which we'll rearrange in presentation, one-three-two, for reasons soon to be demonstrated.
First, he writes, it is true that Trump is a "morally corrosive and corrupting force." But in actuality has he been as painful as he seems? In so many other words, Stephens argues the old quip that Wagner's music is better than it sounds. That is, notwithstanding this president's bluster, ignorance and monkeyshines, NATO remains intact, sanctions remain on Russia, our borders remain at least partially open.
"For the overwhelming majority of Americans," posits Stephens, "life is pretty much the same under Trump as it was under Obama." That's largely true only because Trump has fiddled very little with Obama's enormous gift to him: a bubbling economy, which Trump, of course, now claims is his doing.
Second — which is Stephens' third target — a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren presidency would be as politically uncompromising as Trump's has been; what's more, warns Stephens, "an assertively left-wing presidency would spark a right-wing backlash that would have all of the fear and rage of the left’s Resistance — but none of its restraint." An aside: How would we know if the right ramped up its fear and rage?
And third — which is to say, second — the anyone-but-Trump proposition "understates the radicalism of what Sanders and Warren propose," says Stephens. One researcher figures that, under a Sanders administration, the federal government would swell twice its present size, would employ half of all working Americans, would double its spending percentage of GDP, and, estimates the researcher, "total additional outlays would reach $97.5 trillion on top of the nearly $90 trillion the federal, state and local governments are projected to spend over the next decade."
As for a Warren administration, it too would spend trillions more — on her blizzard of plans — financed by a wealth tax.
Except it wouldn't. And here is the biggest hole in Stephens' argument. Our ultraconservative Supreme Court would shut down, as unconstitutional, Warren's source of financing in a Hayekian minute. Neither would Bernie spend trillions more on Medicare for all or any other programmatic innovation submitted to Congress. If internal squabbling didn't kill Liz or Bernie's big adventures first, a Republican minority in the Senate would permanently bottleneck any sizable progressive plans.
Thus, Stephens is wrong, just plain wrong, in arguing that even another four years of Trump might be better than those of Sanders or Warren. Either Democratic president would be nothing more than a placeholder, watching his or her progressive reforms get rudely shot down by either Congress or Court.
Stephens is correct, however, in ending his column with this: "Democrats can, and hopefully will, nominate a candidate capable of attracting middle-of-the-road support…. They can offer themselves as a sober alternative to a reckless president."
I'll be spending (squandering) the day watching Trump's nightmare defense team, which has nothing to say in his defense, since he is extraordinarily guilty. It has said it will put on an affirmative case. I believe the legal term for that is, in this president's customary mode, "whining."
I did however want to get a post up before today's trial of yet another foregone conclusion. And what serendipity. As I pondered what topic to discuss, the graphic below appeared before my eyes, and required no elaboration.
Simply put, about half of Bernie's believers are fanatical cretins, says the latest Emerson College poll, rated A- by 538. (Pay no attention to Yang's percentage; his numbers are so low, the 50 percent probably means that two of four people said they'd vote for no one else, or were undecided.)
We already knew a large chunk of Bernie's supporters was the ideological counterpart of the Hitler Youth — pathetically brainwashed adolescents so out of touch with reality that even expert deprogramming would be sure to fizzle. But, we didn't know the chunk was such a large chunk; that nearly half of Bernie's supporters are likely to collect their toys and go home, should Bernie not be the man, which he won't be.
My thanks to Kathy, a long-time friend and reader, for emailing this yesterday:
"Hi Phil,
"Here's a story ...
"I am directly descended from an accused witch in Connecticut in 1692. Her name was Mercy Holbridge Disbrow, my 8th great-grandmother. (Because of her, I belong to a lineage society, the Associated Daughters of Early American Witches. Our mission is to protect the reputations of the accused and never let society forget what happened to these very innocent people.) In reading about Mercy, I learned that during her first trial, in which she was found guilty, not every juror attended every day of testimony."
Sound familiar? — although in the present case, his acquittal is as certain as the finding of Mercy's guilt was.
"She was granted a second trial on the basis that her first was invalid. Jurors have an obligation to be present for all the testimony."
So said English law.
"Mercy was found guilty. But Connecticut Governor Winslow pardoned her, claiming that the hanging of witches was cruel and unusual punishment. That turned the tide on the witch hangings in our country."
Had the evil warlock Trump been acquitted in his first trial in 17th-century Connecticut, he too could have been tried again. Although conceived by Demosthenes and instituted in Greek law, 4th c. B.C., the principle of double jeopardy, in 17th-century English law, applied only to capital offenses.
Thus in his second trial, with all the jurors present this time and the Himalayan evidence against him, Trump undoubtedly would have been found guilty. Would Gov. Winslow have pardoned him, freed him from the cruel punishment of hanging?
One would hope not, since the warlock Trump had consistently and unapologetically abused his powers; but what's more, he had for years staunchly advocated the execution — for treason — of virtually anyone who dared to contradict him or expose his crimes. He showed no mercy to others, so unforgivingly around his neck the rope would go. Fair is fair.
Charles Fried, whose family fled invading fascists in 1939 Czechoslovakia, went on to graduate from Princeton, received two degrees in jurisprudence from Oxford, earned a law degree from Columbia, teaches at Harvard Law, has written multiple books on jurisprudence and moral philosophy, and became President Reagan's solicitor general.
Ergo, one might think that when such an esteemed scholar, author, lecturer, moral philosopher and Reaganite says that ...
"[Trump] is the commander in chief of the Army and Navy. But not of the nation…. [He believes he's] the commander in chief of the country. The German word is führer …
He asks for loyalty. To what? To him personally. Not to the law …
"[The chief executive] is "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed"…. Not trickily. Not underhandedly. Not by transferring [money from one budget to another] and calling emergencies …
"What is clear is that [presidential obstruction], whether or not that is criminal obstruction of justice … is an abuse of power such that impeachment would be warranted …
"[A.G. Bill Barr is an] apologist for perhaps the most dishonest person to ever sit in the White House[.] I mean, dishonest in the sense that he lies the way other people breathe …
"My tutor in conservatism is the justice for whom I clerked, John Marshall Harlan, who I think is the greatest conservative justice of the latter half of the 20th century. But it's unimaginable to think of him speaking the way that this hoodlum [Trump] speaks ...
"The man shames the office and the nation: he is a man of low character and repellent personality ...
"Every day that a corrupt president sits, he is capable of doing serious damage …
"[The impeachment articles correctly] argue a serious, concerted and corrupt use of presidential power for personal political gain …
and ...
"I don't understand how much more proof you want. But, in any event, additional proof is available. It's just that the president will not supply it. That is an additional grounds for impeachment" …
… Yes, when a conservative legal scholar and moral philosopher says all that about this hoodlum president, one might think that Republicans, traditionalists and evangelicals would listen. But one would be stupendously wrong.
Sen. Susan Collins doesn't seem to mind presidential abuses of power, obstructions of Congress, extortion and bribery, but she is hotly bothered by someone using what she sees as impolite language. CNN:
"[She] sent a written note early Wednesday morning during President Donald Trump's impeachment trial minutes before Chief Justice John Roberts admonished both legal teams....
"It is unclear [not really] if the note from Collins, a Maine Republican, led directly to Roberts' comments … but the note came shortly before the chief justice spoke. The note was sent as House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, spoke and appeared to accuse senators of a 'cover-up.'"
Which is precisely what Republican senators are committing.
Brushing away Trump's grossly impeachable acts and the Republican Senate covering them up are minor things, when, according to the schoolmarm from Maine, there's bad bad bad (but exact) language to police.
The mental laziness with which the president's defenders have heaped the barricades against the Democratic onslaught has been astounding.
In the Senate, frequent Fox Newser Jay Sekulow and White House counsel Pat Cipollone have most notably defended Trump by simply putting the House prosecutors on trial, which of course is no defense at all. The latter are bad, bad people, say the twosome; they're just being mean to a wonderful guy and outstanding president, however much of a crook he so obviously is.
This is the rally-the-Trumpian-hayseeds-and-crackpots strategy as opposed to any thoughtful legal approach, designed only to intimidate those Republican senators who might be at danger of thinking for themselves.
In the press — for those few Trumpers who can read; the Republican elites! — the president has the reliably ditzy Wall Street Journal editorial board. This morning they write that "especially pernicious" is that the "House managers … don’t deny he can delay aid to a foreign country or ask a foreign leader to investigate corruption. Presidents do that all the time. Instead they assert in their first impeachment article that Mr. Trump is guilty of 'abuse of power' because he committed those acts for 'corrupt purposes.'"
That is a most curious passage, utterly bereft of both honesty and intellect.
The House managers have been livid over the manner in which Trump delayed aid to Ukraine and asked its leader to investigate corruption. He surreptitiously, illegally, and in suspension of U.S. national security withheld congressionally appropriated military aid to a partner nation under Russian assault — until he got caught — and his purported aim of seeing that Ukrainian corruption be investigated was a joke, for all the reasons laid out by those livid, not-in-denial House managers.
Concludes the Journal — again, astoundingly: "The crucial point is to reject impeachment as a regular tool of partisan punishment, reserving it for genuine cases of presidential abuse."
This bit of imbecility, itself thumpingly partisan, echoes that of Sekulow and Cipollone. Trump's misdeeds and misadventures overshadow even Nixon's, in that the former's corrupt purpose was (and is) to undermine American democracy with the extorted assistance of what the founders feared most: a foreign nation's meddling in our elections.
In fact the pseudoconservative press, the right's thundering broadcast machines, Sekulow and Cipollone have flipped the charge of malevolent partisanship on its head. The bringing forth of impeachment articles was no partisan act; it was, as those who followed its long and arduous trail know, a reluctant necessity, since Trump's misdeeds are "genuine cases of presidential abuse."
The uniform partisan malevolence, rather, is being committed by those who close their ears to the charges, refuse to see the evidence, and reject the calling of witnesses. Then again, childish table-turning and yo' mama horseshit have been Republican staples for decades.
Today's head-to-head, general-election prospects from a SurveyUSA national poll (as cited by Political Wire), which are, in part, bad news for Trump:
* Bernie Sanders leads Trump, 52% to 43%
* Joe Biden leads Trump, 50% to 43%
* Mike Bloomberg leads Trump, 49% to 42%
* Elizabeth Warren leads Trump, 48% to 45%
* Pete Buttigieg leads Trump, 47% to 44%
What's wrong with these percentages?
After Real-America Team Trump is done molesting and mauling the bushy-haired, Middle-America-losing socialist from Vermont, the percentages would flip, with Trump trouncing Sanders, 52% to 43%. Biden's lead, however, would remain at least a comfortable 50% to 43%, all the way through 3 November.
Bang.