The Carpentariat

Three constitutional law professors on behalf of impeachment vs. one law professor on behalf of fussiness

Here are key passages, all in agreement and consistent in their dominant theme, delivered this morning before the House Judiciary Committee.

Prof. Noah Feldman, Harvard Law School:

"The solicitation constituted an abuse of the office of the presidency because Pres. Trump was using his office to seek a personal political and electoral advantage over his political rival, former vice president Joe Biden, and over the Democratic Party. The solicitation was made in the course of the president’s official duties … [and] sought to gain an advantage that was personal to the president. This constitutes a corrupt abuse of the power of the presidency."

Prof. Pamala Karlan, Stanford Law School:

"The evidence reveals a President who used the powers of his office to demand that a foreign government participate in undermining a competing candidate for the presidency…. That demand constituted an abuse of power."

Prof. Michael Gerhardt, North Carolina School of Law:

"The record compiled thus far shows that the president has committed several impeachable offenses, including bribery, abuse of power in soliciting a personal favor from a foreign leader to benefit his political campaign, obstructing Congress, and obstructing justice."

Speaking on behalf of the anti-impeachment Republican minority, Georgetown University law professor Jonathan Turley was just as singular in message, but somewhat comical in substance; his testimony had none, in terms of addressing the president's many unmistakable abuses of power. (You can read it, or rather not read it, here.) Yet Turley was fussily upset about the speed with which the Democratic majority has been pursuing impeachment. My goodness, he moaned, this is all proceeding just too quickly — as though if Trump had shot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight, at least a year, maybe two years, of investigation would be required.

That's just about all the anti-impeachment Republicans have, folks — that, and the pathetic "defense" that Trump's many crimes weren't all that serious.

And they'll prevail.

***

Update: To be fair, under subsequent questioning Turley elaborated on his prepared remarks, saying he simply did not believe that Trump's extraordinarily impeachable offenses are, under the Constitution, impeachable. Thus his legal opinion goes deeper than his original testimony at first revealed. But, to be just as fair, he should have stopped at fussiness. 

 

Kamala Harris and the ghost of Ted Kennedy

Forty years ago, Sen. Ted Kennedy taught a seemingly unnecessary yet still invaluable lesson to future presidential candidates: When asked why you want to be president of the United States, you should probably have at hand a comprehensible answer.

On 12 October 1979, when CBS correspondent Roger Mudd asked him that very question on national television, Kennedy's answer was a Dantean journey through an utterly uncontemplated, stream-of-consciousness hell:

"Well, I'm — were I to make the announcement and to run, the reasons I would run is because I have a great belief in this country. That it is — there's more natural resources than any nation in the world; the greatest education population in the world; the greatest technology of any country in the world; the greatest capacity for innovation in the world; and the greatest political system in the world."

Remarked Boston Globe columnist Sam Allis: "The answer went on for 336 words. If this were a painting, it would be a bad Jackson Pollock, at once incoherent and repetitive. It lacked a core commitment and a sense of passion."

In probable truth, Ted Kennedy did lack the passion to be president. His only real motivator was that of his surname, which was more of a destiny.

Flash forward to, as of yesterday, former presidential candidate Kamala Harris. She was Kennedy's opposite in a passionate desire to be president, yet Kennedy's doppelgänger in being rather clueless as to why.

Observes NYT contributing opinion writer Miriam Pawel:

"Her candidacy appeared to have no real rationale and no clear constituency. The penchant for zigzagging that marked her policy positions carried over to strategy, as she veered from positioning herself as the fallback candidate for the left, when conventional wisdom suggested the front-runners might falter, to fashioning herself as the option for moderates when that appeared a more likely lane. Her carefully crafted image crumbled under the scrutiny of a national campaign."

Pawel's quoted assessment begins strong, only to puzzle the reader, however, upon the columnist's noting of Ms. Harris' "carefully crafted image."

As Pawel herself makes clear in preceding passages, Harris' "image" — which had always been weak even among voters in her home state; by 2016, after six years of holding a statewide office, "she remained largely unknown" in California — was merely one of moderation and, of course, intense anti-Trumpism.

With several other moderates in the presidency chase, Harris' moderation — whenever she chose to be moderate, that is — distinguished her none whatsoever. And who, for heaven's sake, in the Democratic presidential lineup wasn't already an intense anti-Trumper?

Hence the first of Pawel's overall assessments correctly explains Harris' withdrawal: Her candidacy possessed "no real rationale."

Did no one on Harris' staff ever show her the Ted Kennedy interview?

"How dare you"

The good news: Partly because of President Obama's climate activism, America's coal-burning greenhouse emissions are expected to drop in 2019 by 11 percent over last year, as natural gas and renewable energies replace coal. The European Union expects a similar reduction, for the same reasons.

The bad news: "Instead of beginning a long-awaited decline, global greenhouse gas emissions are projected to grow slightly during 2019, reaching another record high, according to a new analysis [from the Global Carbon Project]…. [The] report … makes clear that the transformation necessary to rapidly cut greenhouse gas emissions is nowhere in sight….

"[Emissions] are projected to have grown in China (by 2.6 percent), India (1.8 percent) and the rest of the world (by 0.5 percent)."

Rob Jackson, a Stanford University Earth Science professor and Global Carbon Project's chairman, said "It’s another lost year, another lost decade. I don’t want to belittle the important things that have happened and are happening, but they are not enough. People will look back at us and wonder, 'What were you doing?'"

"People" are already looking back — and fuming:

Perfection at Fox News

When you're to the right of Republican Rep. Jim "Rabid Dog" Jordan (listen to Tucker, at 0:45), and then must be corrected by Jordan (at 1:00) on what the party line is, and then agree with Jordan (at 1:04) that your original comment was not only fundamentally illogical but actually helpful to Democrats and NeverTrumpers, then your abnormal brain scans — first confirmed to reassure Fox News in the interview process — make you perfect for the position of primetime network host.

Donald Trump, Guy Fawkes, and Looney Tunes' Tasmanian Devils

Today should be historic. I use the conditional should only because today will not be historic. Instead, historians will record that it was just another Trumpian round of the absurd.

The House Intelligence Committee is set to release its findings today on the obscenely obvious: that Trump abused his presidential power in an extortion-bribery scheme, against Ukraine, designed to politically soil his most likely opponent in the 2020 election, and thus benefit personally by corrupting the proper execution of U.S. foreign policy and endangering our national security.

This has been outed, corroborated, testified to, verified, substantiated and affirmed by numerous U.S. diplomats and White House staffers. No reasonable juror would conclude otherwise. Trump is the Guy Fawkes of American foreign policy, the American political tradition and American decency.

But, enter President Fawkes' allies, those blowjob-prosecuting Republicans who regard a mobster-enforced sale of U.S. foreign policy — so as to politically benefit only the mobster himself — as unworthy of even a bench warrant.

In their written rebuttal to the Intelligence Committee's report, House Republicans conclude that "Trump was acting on 'genuine and reasonable' skepticism of Ukraine and 'valid' concerns about possible corruption involving Americans, not political self-interest."

One notes that this is an affirmative defense of the president, since the more common defense measure of simply making the prosecution prove its case has already been foreclosed. The facts of this case and the acts of this president are embarrassingly conspicuous.

To alleviate their embarrassment and coddle Trump's base, the Republicans reached for their old playbook and flipped no further than "Chapter B" before stumbling on the magic word that so enrages the right:

"The Democrats are trying to impeach a duly elected president based on the accusations and assumptions of unelected bureaucrats who disagreed with President Trump’s policy initiatives and processes." Flip merely two more chapters, now updated, and see: "Deep State."

As if all this weren't absurd and clownish enough, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES himself felt compelled, naturally, to add this ignorant bit of anticonstitutional preposterousness on his way to blowing up more alliances:

Just landed in the United Kingdom, heading to London for NATO meetings tomorrow. Prior to landing I read the Republicans Report on the Impeachment Hoax. Great job! Radical Left has NO CASE. Read the Transcripts. Shouldn’t even be allowed. Can we go to Supreme Court to stop?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2019

Good grief.

I didn't alter the tweet THAT much

Ukraine's President Zelensky, after being bound, gagged, cracked on the head with a NYC phonebook and mock-executed, renews denial of a quid pro quo with Trump over military aid

9:36 AM · Dec 2, 2019

KeepAmericaGreat.com

As (unneeded) further evidence of the Trump organization's incompetence, it overlooked the purchasing of the domain name of its campaign slogan, "Keep America Great." This, Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer did not overlook. So he bought it. Hence, Googling "keep america great" now renders a top link to this page:

"No Malarkey" meets "Epic Ignorance"

Politico:

"NO MALARKEY!" screams the campaign slogan on Joe Biden’s bus chugging through 18 Iowa counties this week….

"Malarkey?" [high-schooler] Cece West asked. "I’ve never heard of it before."

A potential problem with [the term is that] some of the complaints about it are an extension of how Biden skeptics feel about the candidate himself.

They don’t love or hate the slogan. Some of them said it’s kind of funny; others, kind of corny. While some voters welcomed the slogan as a throwback to a calmer era, others said it will only alienate younger voters.

But many said, bottom line, they don’t quite get it.

Evidently no one under the first-time-voting-age of 18 is familiar with this 100-year-old word, which, though I'm not over the age of 100, I've heard (and used, now and again) all my life.

Is there anything, anything at all, that Biden can say or do without being ridiculed by every ignorant jackass from Sean Hannity's 4.4 million Twitter followers to far-too-idle tweeters to Biden's left?

"Biden was mocked all weekend on social media over the slogan," reports Politico, "with detractors saying it highlights his disconnect with voters."

But whose laugh will be last?

"Biden’s campaign has long worn Twitterverse naysayers as a badge of honor, saying his voters — and the majority of Democratic voters — aren’t hanging out on social media."

Fuck this fucking fucksterizing

The wording of this post's title refers to only half of the post's argument, as does this lede, since the argument itself, profanely put, is more than just fucking easy to make; it's unfuckingbelievably easy to make.

That is to say, on the internet, especially, it's fucking sad to see so much poor fucking writing — which somehow gets itself cited by good writers, thus more popularized and even more financially ginned up.

Let us begin with the literate, rational writing of the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, who, in a tertiary way, notes the danger of any Democratic presidential candidate running on a Medicare-for-All platform. Case in point: Elizabeth Warren.

In Quinnipiac's late-October national poll, she led Joe Biden 28 percent to 21 percent. (Sanders, 15; Buttigieg, 10.) Last week's Quinnipiac poll, however, "showed Biden back on top with 24 percent, Buttigieg at 16 percent, Warren at 14 percent." (Sanders, 13.)

What happened to plunge Warren from win to merely show, placing Buttigieg in the middle and putting Biden back in the lead? Medicare for All happened — Warren's at-first tepid, then-clenched embrace of it, followed by journalists' questions about it, followed by her impossible answers about it, finishing with a "pull[ing] back" from it.

"The saga," understates Dionne, "was a lesson in how complicated defending single-payer would be in a general-election campaign." Another, less complicated way to express the "lesson" is that unrestricted Medicare for All would be a Democratic nominee's political death. (It occurs that I should mention, once again, that I favor single-payer; politically, though, it's just too soon.)

How absurd, say many progressive writers, one of whom — indeed the only one of whom — is cited by the NY Times' excellent Mark Leibovich. In a piece titled "The Hater's Guide to Mayor Pete," the "progressive journalist Drew Magary," observes Leibovich, assaults pragmatic Democrats such as Buttigieg for failing to fight for Medicare for All, which, claims Magary, is a "widely approved progressive idea."

His claim is, of course, widely as well as wildly inaccurate. Of course there is strong support for Medicare for All, left at that. Yet once polling respondents are provided its details, its support plummets into Warren's losing proposition.

This counterpoint is essential to any Medicare-for-All debate; nonetheless it is altogether ignored by "progressive journalist" Drew Magary, who once wrote for GQ and now writes for Medium. Still, more bothersome to me is how he so tediously ignores it — i.e., by his almost infinite use of ...

"Fighters … have the fucking courage to disagree with the bad guys"; Buttigieg supporters are "fucking sap[s]"; Buttigieg is a "fucking fraud"; his vanilla personality is "fucking pathetic"; we have "fucking Trump voters"; and Buttigieg is too complacent, so "Fuck that idea. And fuck him."

These somewhat less than elegant descriptions are, on occasion, interspersed with recuperative variety: "bullshit pandering"; "very attractive bullshit pandering"; "bullshit that … garner[s Buttigieg] more attention," although he's a "craven asshole"; "establishment Democrats [are] standing in the goddamn way"; but there's a "shitload" of fighting Democrats, too.

Now let us conclude by grasping the pertinent points here: Magary is fucking right because he's so fucking passionate; those who agree with him are fucking brilliant; those who disagree are fucking idiots; Magary possesses, it seems, a minimal, middle-school vocabulary; Magary's bad writing reminds one of John Gotti's best utterances — and yet, Magary gets prominently cited by the NY Times' John Leibovich, thus yielding the progressive "journalist" an astronomical number of page views.

It's true; I myself sink now and then to Magary's squalid level. But never have I outpaced or even matched it. Not even close. The most pertinent point, however, is that, I guess, I should have. Then I would be cited by the Times, rack up astronomical page views, and hie often to the bank.

The pablum of pandering

​​​​​Bill Rivers, a speechwriter for former defense secretary James Mattis, has written another of those beastly Thanksgiving columns that the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, herself a former speechwriter (for President Reagan), might pen: a sententious tribute to the familial farce of this annual giving of thanks that Uncle Elmer — a loud, bullheaded, Trump-loving, mossback of a racist ass — should be a beloved member of virtually everyone's unfortunate little clan.

Having reminded us that America has suffered through earlier times of extraordinary sociopolitical strife — his chronology of nationally divisive pain begins, almost comically, with the Whisky Rebellion of the early 1790s — Rivers concludes with secondhand advice that only a qualified psychologist of skin-crawling clichés could ever think to offer:

"Psychologist Dan Goleman has argued that families are 'the first school for emotional learning.'"

Proceeds Rivers: "If so, then we’re all better served by forgetting politics this Thanksgiving and focusing instead on the person across the table, listening authentically, loving them as best we can, and letting them love us.

"In the end, it’s the common acceptance of truth that will set us free from acrimony. Determining the truth is hard, but we can create space for the necessary national dialogue by first starting small in our own homes."

For starters, I've no idea what a "national dialogue" is, other than the course and outcome of the only truly national referendum, of sorts, we hold every fours years. The last one demonstrated that, first (and again), U.S. presidential elections are hideously undemocratic; second, that a subliterate swindler and guttersniping ignoramus can indeed win such an election; and third — evidence of the second — that nearly half of contemporary American voters make H.L. Mencken's booboisie look like Georgetown sophisticates. Such is the spatial salvation upon which Mr. Rivers' hopes hang.

"Determining the truth is hard," observes Rivers in a rather self-evident phrase of utter uselessness, seeing how some truths — some major truths which divide us today — are self-evidently easy at which to arrive: gutting federal revenue does not increase federal revenue; running massive deficits in otherwise propitious economic times would have John Maynard Keynes face-palming; claiming that $700 billion a year is an insufficient amount for the defense department to afford ammunition; caging children is generally regarded as somewhat bad government policy; treating allies as enemies and enemies as allies is likely counterproductive; and so and so forth, straight into the sempiternal hellhole of a country that Trumpism has steeped us.

The problem, Mr. Rivers, is that the "common acceptance of truth" is precisely what's so uncommon these days. There exists an army of fabulists, from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh to Hugh Hewitt, who profit enormously from instructing millions of Trump's fellow ignoramuses on horrendous falsehoods.

Elmer is one of them. And "listening authentically" (whatever that means) to one's avuncular crackpot is, colloquially put, a fucking waste of time.

The closest my family ever got to owning an "authentic" Elmer was a John Birch suitor to my widowed grandmother who earnestly argued with my soon-enraged father, upon every visit to our home, that Dwight D. Eisenhower had been a communist president.

Bill Rivers' column is but valid proof of only one thing: To be a valued speechwriter is to be a blithering fabulist oneself.

A happy Thanksgiving of gore

There is, I would argue — and shall — a vague, fleetingly ambiguous but disturbingly connected link between two isolated actions of a dead president, known for his valor, and a sitting chief executive who attempts to merely play the part of his heroic predecessor. Please bear with me, for though the link is tenuous, it is, I believe valid.

In 1912, as former president Theodore Roosevelt departed the Gilpatrick Hotel to deliver a third-term campaign speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium, he waved to the assembled crowd as he entered his awaiting automobile. Suddenly, from a distance of only five feet, a blast from a Colt revolver plunged a bullet into chest. Roosevelt fingered the wound, noticed a roughly 12mm hole, then coughed several times to check for any blood emitting from his right lung. There was none.

Thus personally reassured, rather than having himself transported to the hospital, he ordered his driver to the auditorium, where he stood to speak. "Friends," he announced, "I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot." Thereupon he informed the audience that his speech would be shorter than planned, since, as you can well imagine, blood had by then stained a large section of this white shirt.

Instead, he spoke for 90 minutes, his voice weakening throughout every one.

We now return to the scene of the crime. After one John Flammang Schrank, an unemployed barkeeper later declared criminally insane, had pulled the trigger, the attendant crowd murderously descended on him. Blared T.R., "Don’t hurt him. Bring him here. I want to see him." That done, he asked Schrank, "What did you do it for?" Schrank did not answer. "Oh, what’s the use," said T.R. "Turn him over to the police."

Schrank's prosecution would be left to the proper authorities, with T.R. exerting no influence on his many political and police connections. The law and Schrank's future (29 years in an insane asylum) would wind their way according to the norms and statutes of American justice.

Enter the travesty of Donald J. Trump and his "manly" interference in the case of Chief Petty Officer and Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, who in 2017 was charged with multiple murders involving ISIS captives. Acquitted of these and other charges, Gallagher was found guilty of posing for a Kodak moment with the body of a dead prisoner — a violation of military law. His sentence was light; a one-step reduction in rank and time served.

Against all the norms and traditions of military justice and its courts, Trump personally intervened and rescinded Gallager's demotion. Moreover, the president gutted a Naval review board convened to decide whether Gallagher could retain his SEAL Trident pin.

Writes former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer (fired because he had written Trump, "asking him not to get involved in these questions": "This was a shocking and unprecedented intervention in a low-level review. It was also a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices."

Ethics. uniformity of rules, conventional practices — three traditions at the president level valued by one and shamefully disregarded by another. As an aside, I would wager that had Trump been shot in the chest by Mr. James Schrank, he would have yelped to the crowd: Kill the son of a bitch!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

CNN's latest poll: Devastating with a touch of optimism

Here's some news, from CNN's SSRS polling, that should have you retching for both distance and accuracy, to steal from Martin Crane.

"After five days of public hearings in House Democrats' impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, public opinion over whether the President ought to be impeached and removed from office remains exactly the same as it was in October.

"Half of Americans say Trump should be impeached and removed from office, 43% say he should not."

This seems especially troubling: "Independents are closely divided on the question, 47% in favor, 45% opposed." If by "Independents" one means the somewhat persuadable, then a split in opinion disadvantages House Democrats in swing districts.

Even more troubling for House Dems is this: "The public is about evenly divided over whether there is enough evidence now for the House to vote to impeach … (48% say yes, 47% say no)." That's just to impeach, mind you, not to remove the head of the Trump crime family.

And get this: Among all Americans, "17% say [Republicans] are doing too little and 41% say they're doing the right amount to defend Trump." That's an electorate in which 58% also believe mob lawyers should either kick up their game or they're "doing the right thing" by encouraging their clients to whack any disagreeable witnesses.

The good news is that women may save us yet, next November. "There is now a 20-point difference between men and women on Trump's overall approval rating (52% of men approve vs. 32% of women)…. And the poll marks the first time that more than 60% of women have said they backed impeaching Trump and removing him from office."

Why? Because women have spent the centuries (surreptitiously) developing their brains while men have been content with their nonevolutionary brawn. We men are the apish iguanas of the human species; we figure that as long as our gorilla chests and lizard dicks are big enough, we'll get by just fine. Which leads most of us to support morons and mob bosses like Donald J. Trump.

***

I apologize if I sound a bit cranky. My dehydration has advanced to the point of an emergency-room visit for a petrol fill-up. And I detest emergency rooms.

I'm down again, but I hope to be back later today. 

(Update: I know now it's dehydration, for sure; all the symptoms have worsened since early morning. I'm downing water and G2 and walking around so as not to fall asleep again.) 

Why ignorance rules. It's pretty simple.

This cannot be said too many times, which is why E.J. Dionne is saying it again, and why I am about to quote E.J. Dionne again.

For all the ridicule the left heaps on ignorant, white evangelicals, the latter, when it comes to politics, are far smarter than the former. Because, writes Dionne, "white evangelicals turn out to be the premier pragmatists of U.S. politics":

They know they are losing ground in public opinion on issues such as same-sex marriage. An older group than the country as a whole, they are also in demographic decline as our nation grows more ethnically, racially and religiously diverse.

Nonetheless, their strength in Republican primaries — dominated by older white voters — continues unabated, which helps explain why Republican politicians are either Trump apologists or mealy mouthed about his abuses. The best defense evangelicals have against the new majority is control of the courts, which Trump is giving them. Everything else is negotiable, or ignorable.

Above all, as progressives spend their time eating overpriced chicken wings and drinking outrageously overrated imported beers at sports bars, snickering and snarking at Scripture-thumping hayseeds all the while, white evangelicals spend their time getting their ignorant friends and family members to the voting booth on Election Day, so that we can all be ruled by their fellow, cryptofascistic ignoramuses.

Every two years, every four years, the Democratic establishment (those being muscled out of decision-making roles at, for instance, presidential conventions), swears it will turn these progressives around — whereupon the true American majority can rule. And yet every two years, every four years, the young, the informed, the "enlightened" progressives fuck us all by either staying home or voting for electorally hopeless left-wing candidates in swing districts and purple states.

If it weren't for moderate Democratic voters — who on occasion can outnumber the progressive clowns — the White House would be permanently Red and Congress would be a permanent Reichstag.