Justice needs truth

Sarah Kendzior, in response to investigation committee sessions behind closed doors, tweeted:

You can't have justice without truth. You just can't.

These attempts to hide the truth -- whether through deliberate lies, institutional obfuscation, or pure gutlessness -- only hurt the pursuit of justice and hurt actual people. An informed public is a powerful public.

I also think about Harry Truman. The part where he had to explain "I never gave anyone hell. I told the truth, and they thought it was hell."

In another tweet Kendzior wrote:

People should be concerned that all the scholars of authoritarianism have been issuing the same warnings for three years. Politically we are not the same; you'll find progressives, conservatives etc. It's not like we agree on everything. But we recognize a textbook dictatorship.

Mister, can you spare a taco?

The nasty guy has announced a 5% tariff on all goods imported from Mexico. The tariff is to rise by another 5% a month until it reaches 25%. The tariff is to be imposed until Mexico stops the flow of Mexican and Central American refugees reaching the US southern border.

NPR explored such questions as whether it is illegal. Yes, under USA law (Congress ceded tariffs to the Prez. a while back). No, under NAFTA or its not yet ratified replacement. No, under World Trade Organization rules. NPR also explored whether Mexico can halt the flow of refugees – no, because their own security forces are already spread too thin. In other words, the nasty guy is asking for a nearly impossible result.

A lot of the news coverage has been about what the tariff will do to cars. Because of NAFTA, various parts that go into cars might currently cross the border up to seven times.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville points out a much bigger concern: food. A significant portion of the US food supply comes from Mexico. McEwan asks:

How many people can afford for their grocery bills to go up by 25%?
…
If Trump follows through on this malicious threat, people will starve. And … only the most brutal dictators starve their own people.

Commenter carovee added:

Aaaand, Lindsay Graham has already folded. So I guess Republicans are cool with their constituents starving. Sadly, their base seems pretty cool with suffering as long as those people are suffering more. Deplorables, all of 'em.

Becca Stareyes wrote:

Somehow, I ended up following a few agriculture scientists on Twitter, and they note that when considering the impact of 'exactly how much food we import from Mexico', we also need to consider that we have a record low on planting corn and soybeans in the Midwest thanks to the cold, wet weather, and the Southeast is in a drought.

So basically exactly the conditions where we might need to import more food, and this guy is threatening tariffs on a country we get lots of food from?

eyeballsmccat added:

I have never claimed to be any sort of political prognosticator, and I'm certainly not going to start now, especially on behalf of the GOP, but...why in the WORLD would you mess with FOOD prices during an election cycle?

This is mostly a rhetorical question. I don't like any of the answers I can come up with, personally.

The crowd outside

My Congressional representative is Rashida Tlaib. She’s been calling for impeachment of the nasty guy since she took office in January. She has introduced House Resolution 257 to begin investigation of possible impeachable offenses. She’s been talking to her House colleagues to about becoming cosponsors.

She hosted a “Congress, Coffee & Conversation” event this evening. So I went. It was held in a “small business” size restaurant. When I got there, about the time the event was to start, I saw a crowd around the door and an aide already speaking. From what he eventually said the restaurant had already exceeded the fire code capacity. He wanted us to know of upcoming events. He said they were surprised at the size of the crowd and assured us future venues will be chosen for a much larger capacity.

I counted 35 in the crowd outside. I didn’t count the two woman who carried protest signs or the cluster of vets (with flags) who sat in the shade.

About ten minutes later Rashida arrived with her two sons (she’s a single mom). The protest women started speaking as Rashida shook hands (alas, she didn’t get to me). Someone else said, “Should we sing Happy Birthday to drown them out?” Then Rashida began to speak and the protest women quieted down with the rest of us. Rashida spoke of what her office could do for us and some of her big issues, such as auto insurance rates (this is a state issue, but Rashida isn’t shy about expressing her opinion).

Then a man asked what about impeachment? Rashida went into some of the reasons why she thought impeachment was necessary and important. This included saying she opposed the merger of two phone companies – and when the company reps came to Washington they stayed at the nasty guy’s hotel. Even Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm when he became president, she said. This president hasn’t even done a proper blind trust.

A protest woman shouted, “That’s a lie!” The rest of the crowd seemed annoyed. Rashida engaged for a bit though she also made it obvious it was time for her to head inside. That’s when I left.



I looked up Resolution 257. Alas, it has only nine cosponsors. It should have much more than that – like 220 more.

Hypocrisy is the point

Senate Majority Leader and Democracy Gravedigger Mitch McConnell blocked the appointment of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. This was in the last year of Obama’s presidency. McConnell justified it with the nonsense that it wasn’t respectful of voters to allow an outgoing president to make lifetime appointments. McConnell also held open over 100 federal judge positions, which he and the nasty guy are filling with haste.

So since next year is the last in the nasty guy’s first (and hopefully only) term McConnell was asked, “Should a Supreme Court justice die next year, what will your position be on filling that spot?” He replied, “Oh, we’d fill it.” He also bragged that the most important thing he’s done is fill all those vacancies with conservative ideologues who have lifetime appointments (he’s up around 65 so far).

A lot of people are, naturally, calling McConnell a hypocrite.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has a few things to say:

And what's important to understand is that McConnell is not merely a "hypocrite," as you will undoubtedly see him called a million times today. He is a strategic, conniving, shameless authoritarian for whom the asymmetry of the rules is the point.

That's why he's announcing it (with zero fear of consequence, I might add). He wants us to know about the double-standard. He wants to appall us with it.

It's a brazen flex.

McConnell just doesn't want to win. He wants to rub our noses in it. He wants us to know he cheated his way to victory. He wants to gloat about his domination.

He isn't confessing hypocrisy. He's doing a touchdown dance.

Commenter mcbender adds:

There's a line I come across occasionally (I can't remember who first said it) that the sort of hierarchy conservatism wants has two major groups: those the law protects but does not bind, and those the law binds but does not protect. In their minds, this is what the law is for. It's not meant to be fair, or to be taken literally, it's meant to provide excuses for the overclass to evade accountability and enact oppression, and to reinforce oppression on the underclass and ensure they remain so.

But this isn't the whole of it, nor a sufficient explanation, as a friend of mine pointed out to me recently. The other aspect is that, in order to be sure that that's their actual state of affairs under the system, they MUST behave lawlessly, and in the open. There's no other way for them to get concrete evidence of being exempt from the rules. If they cheat in secret, they could only be getting away with it through not being caught. The brazenness and hypocrisy are the point, because that's how they know they have power, and the outrage from those of us who don't believe the world should work like that only reinforces it for them. Calling McConnell a hypocrite might as well be a compliment.

I don't know if there's a change in tactics that this understanding should suggest; I haven't quite gotten that far. But it's vital to understand what they're doing.

Most ruthless and dishonest campaign

Digby, who writes the blog Hullabaloo, starts off a Memorial day post with a comparison of Germany of about 1930 with America today.

Then Digby goes on to something I mentioned a couple days ago. I had quoted Sarah Kendzior talking about Democrats:

They've refused to hold impeachment hearings and thus opened the door for show trials.

The obvious thought would be show trials of Democrats, perhaps Hillary Clinton about whom people at nasty guy rallies still chant, “Lock her up!”

Digby quotes Michael Tomasky’s article in the Daily Beast titled, You Think it’s Bad Now, Wait for the Show Trials.

From Tomasky’s article:

I’ve been trying to tell people, with varying degrees of success, that next year’s campaign is going to be—by far—the most ruthless and dishonest campaign that any living American has seen. Some people take me seriously. But most say something along the lines that it can hardly get any worse.

Oh yes it can. It can get a lot worse.

In my recent post I wrote that Attorney General William Barr had been given a free hand to determine what classified material about intelligence agencies can be declassified. The agencies had launched a probe into shady dealings within the 2016 nasty guy campaign.

It is these agents who might be the target of the first show trials, targets such as James Comey who was head of the FBI until the nasty guy fired him, James Clapper who was Director of National Intelligence, Peter Strzok who was the head of the FBI Counterespionage Section, Andy McCabe who was a long time FBI agent and its Deputy Director, and Lisa Page who was a colleague of Peter Strzok. And if they can, they’ll indict any Democrats they can get dirt on. One possible target is VP Joe Biden. The trials will probably start next spring – in time to make a big splash for the 2020 election.

Tomasky:

So take this seriously. On Friday, Trump accused Comey, McCabe, Strzok, and Page of “treason.” For investigating a presidential campaign. Treason is aiding an enemy during wartime. And is punishable by death. Trump used the word specifically to signal to his attack dogs that anything is fair game.

So yes, next year’s campaign will be a nightmare beyond the imagination of any novelist who has yet tried to capture and describe totalitarian, hall-of-mirrors horror, from Koestler to Orwell to Kundera or anyone else. They were all describing how a regime gets away with it in a totalitarian state. But these people will be getting away with it in a democracy.

Others supporting nasty guy’s authoritarianism have also taken up his chant. One of them is Liz Cheney (yeah, *his* daughter) who recently used the word “treason.”
https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2019/05/so-you-think-trump-is-one-off.html

Digby closes with:

Even if they don't have a majority of the population, they are showing they have a total willingness to win by any means necessary. That is not far-fetched at all. After all, there was a huge investigation showing that the Trump campaign welcomed the cheating and have been working feverishly to ensure that nothing inhibits such cheating in the future. Now they are engaged in an Orwellian propaganda campaign to say it was the other side that committed the crimes they themselves committed.

The Democrats winning in 2020 is anything but assured, even if Trump goes into the election with a 35% approval rating.

Leah McElrath tweeted a summary:

Just to be clear: A Republican elected official introducing the word “treason” into the dialogue is introducing the threat of execution of FBI agents for doing their jobs.

The harm in delaying impeachment

In a stunningly brazen move, as Melissa McEwan of Shakesville calls it, the nasty guy has given his Attorney General William Barr the power to declassify secret intelligence. This is a part of an audit of intelligence agencies’ investigation of Russian election interference. All in the name of “transparency.”

That may need a bit of translating. The various intelligence agencies have, of course, been investigating how Russia interfered in our elections. If anyone has proof of the nasty guy working with the Russians, they would.

So the nasty guy wants to “audit” these investigations. There are all sorts of reasons – none good for democracy – why the nasty guy wants to do this. One reason would be to discredit the intelligence agencies.

We already know how eager Barr is to protect the nasty guy. So we can be sure the memos that somehow damage the nasty guy will stay classified. And the ones that help the nasty guy will be declassified – whether or not they might harm intelligence agents or the nation as a whole. It also gives Barr and the nasty guy a chance to say we’ve declassified all this stuff and it shows nothing, allowing them to imply there is nothing hidden that might implicate the nasty guy.

McEwan sums it up:

It's another catastrophic erosion of our democracy, and it demands accountability, and there is no one empowered to deliver consequences who feels inclined to do it.

She later added a comment to this post:

Here is a perfect example of why I have been urgently calling for impeachment hearings. By not calling for impeachment hearings sooner, and by so closely tying impeachment to the Mueller report, Democrats have lost a major battle.

Because now Barr controls the messaging around the Mueller report.

If Democrats would have launched impeachment proceedings before the Mueller report came out, it would have bolstered their case and allowed them to make the argument that withholding the report was designed to conceal evidence that they were right to impeach him.

Instead, we've now got Barr in control of leaking only what details he wants to shape the public dialogue, and to discredit the investigatory agencies, their intel, and their conclusions.

This is so bad. Waiting is a terrible idea. It offers continual opportunity for Trump & Co. to seize and control not just the messaging (although that, too), but our very democracy.

Sarah Kendzior comments on a tweet that said the nasty guy gets to call anything he disagrees with as fake news:

They've refused to hold impeachment hearings and thus opened the door for show trials.

Where is our heartbeat bill?

It is finally warm in the Detroit area. It has been a cool spring. I heard this has set a record for the latest in the year to finally hit 80F. I’m not complaining. I like bicycling in cool weather.



Pamela Merritt has something to say to all those lawmakers who are rushing to pass abortion bans based on the heartbeat of the embryo, saying they are pro-life.

Black women and infants in Missouri are 3 to 4 times more likely to die from pregnancy complications. Where’s our heartbeat bill? Where is our legislative urgency? Shame on you and all who claim to be prolife yet only serve white supremacy.

This is more proof that anti-abortion laws are not about abortion. They’re about tying women to children. They’re about misogyny.



A quote from The Lassa Ward: One Man’s Fight Against One of the World’s Deadliest Diseases by Ross Donaldson. Though it was written in 2009 it is still accurate:

Seeing modern health care from the other side, I can say that it is clearly not set up for the patient. It is frequently a poor arrangement for doctors as well, but that does not mitigate how little the system accounts for the patient's best interest. Just when you are at your weakest and least able to make all the phone calls, traverse the maze of insurance, and plead for health-care referrals is that one time when you have to your life may depend on it.

This is not a joke

At a recent rally the nasty guy “joked”

Now we're gonna have a second time, and we're gonna have another one, and then we'll drive them crazy, let me— Ready? [the crowd cheers] And maybe if we really like it a lot, and if things keep going like they're going, we'll go and do what we have to do — we'll do a three and a four and a five!

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville reminds us:

Donald Trump always telegraphs what he is planning to do, often under the auspices of a "joke."

This is not a joke. The President of the United States is suggesting that he will ignore the law on term limits and "do what we have to do" to continue to stay in office for as long as 20 years.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer went to the White House to talk about infrastructure. McEwan called the meeting a bad idea. It’s …

a policy of corporate giveaways and privatization schemes that doesn't even deserve their time of day on its face, *no less* when a significant portion of the Democratic base and an increasing number of the Democratic Congressional caucus is calling for Pelosi to launch impeachment hearings.

And, as many predicted, Nancy and Chuck got played. At the start of the meeting the nasty guy stormed out declaring he wouldn’t work with Democrats until they stopped all those investigations and talk of impeachment. Then he dashed out to the Rose Garden to an obviously well planned press conference to present his side of the story.
http://www.shakesville.com/2019/05/we-resist-day-853.html

So that means we should check in on that impeachment thing.

Monday evening in a closed door session the Democrat leadership team repeatedly pushed Pelosi to start impeachment proceedings. Some members were reportedly near to “rebellion.” And Pelosi pushed back. This resistance might lead to a serious split in the Democratic leadership.

Matt Fuller, who covers the House for Huffington Post wrote as part of a series of tweets:

When Pelosi describes her position on impeachment, it really lays bare how nakedly political she views this.

She says Trump has obstructed justice and committed impeachable acts, but she sees impeachment as divisive.

You think Pelosi’s position is they’re in the middle of a process, and that, in her mind, impeachment is a perfectly likely destination. That’s wrong. And I talk to the Democrats who actually want to impeach every day. Pelosi is doing everything she can to prevent impeachment.

It’s appeasement. It’s misdirection. She is convincing everyone that she takes his actions seriously, while completely relying on the election to remove him. I have no problem telling you that Nancy Pelosi does not want to impeach Trump. Very comfortable with that statement.

Bree Newsome Bass tweeted a response about being “divisive” with a previous and recent tweet:

Be wary of anyone employing the "let's not create division [by dealing in reality]" talking point.

Re-upping tweets where I warned about politicians calling for an end to "division" and not an end to things like racism & corruption. They want power for themselves more than they want to change anything substantively for us.

Yeah, trying to end the oppression caused by a rigid social hierarchy is, according to those at the top, “divisive.”

McEwan has an observation about the GOP:

We went right from "Republicans are the REAL Americans, so they are beyond censure" to "Republicans are traitors, so they are a lost cause" in one easy step.

Both of them work to obfuscate that Republicans have been staging a coup for decades that culminated on Election Day.

In either case, the message is that none of this catastrophic collapse can be blamed on Republicans. They were unassailable patriots and now they are irredeemable traitors.

And it's just a big ol' coincidence that the failure of our politics, culture, and media has resulted in near-total Republican control of the three branches of government and most state legislatures.

Obviously the solution is to yell at the women who document how it happened, happens, is happening.

Non-scandal

Mainstream media can’t be bothered with a horrendously corrupt president. But when a woman candidate is rising in the polls the mainstream media is way too eager to create scandals out of nothing. The lastest hit was by the Washington Post whose headline (all that I read) shouted, "While Teaching, Elizabeth Warren Worked on More Than 50 Legal Matters, Charging as Much as $675 an Hour."

Mikal Jollett tweeted some sarcasm:

Let me get this straight, While the laziest President in history fucks off and plays golf, the best scandal the Washington Post can come up with is that Elizabeth Warren once worked TWO JOBS?

"I can't believe this woman had the gall to EARN money instead of, say, LAUNDERING it through shady real estate deals in Florida."

"Oh no, I can't believe this brilliant woman made her money as a bad-ass attorney instead of, say, inheriting it from her rich racist dad."

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville adds her own sarcasm:

WOW SCANDALOUS! A woman didn't work for free! Call the police!
…
Barack Obama held office as president for 8 years, and ran for the office for 2 years before that, and, in that entire decade, I don't believe I ever once heard anything about the hourly rate he earned as an attorney.

What was Mitt Romney's hourly rate at Bain Capital? How much did George W. Bush earn hourly consulting for Satan? Where are Donald Trump's motherfucking taxes?

Another bad headline from the Daily Beast: “Mr. Nice Cory Booker Is Quietly Knifing His Rivals” McEwan calls them out too:

In an era where the sitting president will literally just spew bile about his critics' appearance and calls for his political opponents to be jailed, it's quite the choice to accuse Booker of "knifing his rivals" for stuff like a tame criticism about rich candidates funding their own vanity presidential runs.

I also have to say I find it objectionable to use violent imagery about a man of color, especially one who has spoken passionately, personally, and at length about being animated in his public service by the violence he has seen in his community.

What pro-life actually looks like

Kirsten Gillibrand, Democratic candidate for President, has released a policy initiative, the Family Bill of Rights: The right to a safe pregnancy, the right to give birth or adopt regardless of income or sexual orientation, the right to a safe and affordable nursery, and the right to affordable day care and universal pre-k. The release added:

It gives parents confidence that they're going to have the resources they need to meet the needs of their infant. It also gives them hope that their child is going to have all the resources and opportunities that they know that their child deserves.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville notes a contrast. She wrote that…

particularly in this moment of aggressive anti-choice horror, that this sort of policymaking is what being "pro-life" actually looks like.

McEwan quotes a Guttmacher study from 2005 that found 73% of women gave as their reason for an abortion, “I can’t afford a baby now.” That included no help from the father, not being able to work while pregnant or caring for a newborn, lacking health insurance.

Want to significantly reduce abortion? See Gillibrand’s Family Bill of Rights. Make sure having a baby isn’t a financial calamity.

But GOP lawmakers aren’t going for it because their real purpose isn’t to end abortion, but to make women’s lives miserable.

McEwan adds that she is delighted with the way Cory Booker and Julián Castro have been talking about these anti-abortion bills.

I am old enough to remember when even pro-choice male (and some female) Democratic politicians would practically crawl out their skins if obliged to say the word "abortion," no less vigorously defend it without qualification and caveat, and now here we are with four unapologetically pro-choice female senators running for president and two male candidates who can unyieldingly defend abortion access, who can say the word without a squeamishness that conveyed a deadly stigma.

Storm alert

Over the last couple days the central plains states have been hit by big storms, including large numbers of tornadoes. One ripped through Jefferson City, Missouri last night. I hear the storm system has settled in to stay for a while and the forecast is the same for the weekend. More storms, more chance of tornadoes.

Tracey Steele tweeted a thread:

It's impossible to know how many lives were saved in Jefferson City last night thanks to the warnings issued by the National Weather Service. This post is a reminder that Donald Trump appointed the CEO of Accuweather to lead the NWS. Accuweather has actively lobbied for years to keep the NWS from issuing weather information directly to the public, because Accuweather doesn't want the competition. Meanwhile, the company repackages and sells weather data generated by the government and pretends that Accuweather is the source of that information. Now, Barry Lee Myers has the power to direct the NWS' policies in ways that benefits his family's company (but not the taxpayers who fund the science upon which that company is built). … Trump has given leadership positions to donors and friends who are, in some cases, getting richer as a result of their access to government power, and in other cases, are so incompetent or indifferent about their jobs as to put lives at risk.

JipCRose replied:

All his appointments, except Mattis, point to DT's handlers ideological goal of rendering all gov't agencies ineffective and dysfunctional. Then they can point to that as justification for disbanding them. Enriching friends along the way is just a perk for DT.

Randy Koehn added, talking about a GOP slogan:

“The government is broken” has been a rallying cry for years. How better to prove you are right than by breaking the government?

But we expect them to try

Today I got an email notice from a progressive group. They are organizing a protest in Washington, DC for June 1. The purpose is to demand that House Democrats begin impeachment proceedings. On the page describing the event they list the nasty guy’s 10 impeachable offenses:

1: Obstructing Justice

2: Violating the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution

3: Conspiring with Others to Commit Crimes Against the United States, and Attempting to Conceal Those Violations

4: Advocating Violence and Undermining Equal Protection Under the Law

5: Abusing the Pardon Power

6: Engaging in Conduct that Grossly Endangers the Peace and Security of the United States

7: Directing Law Enforcement to Investigate and Prosecute Political Adversaries for Improper and Unjustifiable Purposes

8: Undermining the Freedom of the Press

9: Cruelly and Unconstitutionally Imprisoning Children and their Families

10: Violating Campaign Finance Laws

I’m beginning to think about going. It would be a tight fit in my schedule. The group promoting the event is offering free bus rides to and from Detroit. Alas, both to and from are overnight rides. And I didn’t enjoy the last time I did overnight bus rides to a protest in Charlotte over Labor Day weekend in 2012 (yeah, I blogged about it here).

If I’m going to pay for the trip (car or flight and hotel) I’d want to visit the city for longer than I have available.

Such a protest shouldn’t be necessary. Most of us thought that flipping the House to the Democrats last November would have been enough. Alas, it isn’t. Democrats aren’t acting.

Yeah, they have issued subpoenas. But they haven’t yet grappled with what to do as those subpoenas are ignored.

So Sarah Kendzior, who studies authoritarian regimes and has been calling for impeachment for a few months now, continues to tweet about it.

A quote from a recent episode of her Gaslit Nation podcast:

We do not expect this to be easy, or even for battles to be won. But we do expect the Democratic leadership to *try*. What is demoralizing people, what is tearing people apart, is that they will not even try.

That prompted John McAndrew to tweet a quote from Harper Lee:

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

Kendzior again. From a month ago:

The message Pelosi conveys when she says Trump is 'not worth it' is that it is not worth holding him accountable for crimes that have resulted in the loss of human life and the ongoing destruction of our nation. Pelosi may not have intended for this to be her message, but that is how many received it. She hurled a grenade into progressives and wounded many with her words. She may think we can vote Trump out, but she has hurt that very cause.

And commenting on that passage this week:

We warned that the greatest damage she'd inflict would be to her own party. Now that people are finally realizing she was never working for justice, the fallout is starting to happen. … When someone tells you that stopping the person abusing you is "not worth it", believe them. That tells you what kind of person they are.

Pelosi isn't representing the Dem party, 70% of which are for impeachment. She is an outlier who jokes with Bill Barr. I encourage you to boost the reps who *are* concerned for our country and welfare. Don't look for saviors, period -- but falling for phony saviors is even worse!

Debra Miller tweeted a response:

I predict that Pelosi will go down in history as the second most despised majority leader. Mitch wins hands down but Pelosi has been the willing accomplice. And just like the Iraq war, we will have protestations of "we didn't know." BS, we told you then and we're telling you now.

Back in March Kendzior tweeted a list of 81 people and organizations that the House Judiciary Committee has asked to come before them. The list includes: Carter Page, Don Jr., Erik Prince, Hope Hicks, Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Trump Transition, and the NRA. Kendzior now adds:

I want you to imagine all these people at impeachment hearings -- or at the least, discussion of their activity at impeachment hearings. And then ask yourself: why is the House Democratic leadership protecting them by forbidding this process?

Many people, including Kendzior, have long suspected that many Republicans in Washington have been compromised by the Russians or others. This comment by Kendzior makes me wonder how many of the Democrats, maybe even Pelosi, have also been compromised.

It has now gotten so far… Elizabeth de la Vega tweeted:

If Dems never conduct a formal House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry, Trump's 2020 message will be that Dems' failure to conduct impeachment proceedings "proves" that even *they* didn't think he did anything that was all that bad, including his obstruction of justice.

To which Kendzior replied:

This is correct, and Trump has already used this framing, thanking Pelosi for not impeaching him and claiming it's because he never did anything wrong.

And that old hoary claim that the 2020 election will save us?

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reports on the Gravedigger of Democracy:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is doing everything in his power to keep Donald Trump in the White House, even if that means keeping American elections systems vulnerable to hacking by Russia, or any other foreign power that wants to intervene. He's already done it a couple of times: when he shut down a public information effort on Russian attempts to hack the 2016 election, and when he blocked legislation to protect elections from advancing last year, ahead of the 2018 balloting.

No matter that Election Assistance Commission (EAC) officials are urgently pleading for assistance for 2020. Sen. Roy Blunt, Senate Rules Committee chairman, told officials in a hearing Wednesday that his boss, McConnell, wouldn't be allowing legislation already passed by the House to come to the Senate floor.

Sen. Dick Durban said:

I hope you catch the irony here that at the CIA and intelligence agencies, millions of dollars are being spent to stop the Russians from making a mess of the 2020 election, and yet, in the United States Senate, we can't bring a bill to the floor to even debate it.

That news prompted a tweet from Craig Unger:

Its worse than irresponsible. It borders on treasonous. It’s an invitation for hostile foreign powers to sabotage our election, to assault out sovereignty—all, presumably to re-elect a man who was installed with Russia’s help and will continue to serve its interests

It’s nobody’s fault

Now that I’m done with the Cinetopia Film Festival I was able to get to another cultural event today. This afternoon was the last performance of Michigan Opera Theatre’s production of The Grapes of Wrath.

Yeah, I read the novel by John Steinbeck sometime in high school. I also saw the movie, the one starring Henry Fonda released in 1940. I don’t remember much of either one. High school was a long time ago.

And now it has been turned into an opera. It premiered a dozen years ago. The libretto is by Michael Korie, who worked from the book and included some scenes from the explanatory chapters of the book. The music is by Ricky Ian Gordon. I’ve heard another work of his and enjoyed it, so I knew this would be tuneful, not some modernist stuff that works to avoid tunes. Several of the characters have beautiful arias, especially John Casy, Ma Joad, and Tom Joad. Even Noah Joad has a tender moment.

The basic plot is the Joad family is forced off their land in Oklahoma because of the Dust Bowl. They travel to California to try to find work and it doesn’t go well. A theme of the story is economic inequality. In an early scene the chorus sings about the foreclosure crisis being nobody’s fault. The local bank has to follow the rules by its headquarters on Oklahoma City. The HQ has to follow the rules set by Chicago. Whoever is in Chicago has to follow the rules set by Congress. The rich rig the system in their favor, then say sorry, I can’t help you. I’m just following the rules. It’s nobody’s fault.

The music was wonderful, the singing was wonderful, the acting pretty good, the story was great. Alas, I have issues with the set. The first scene is set in a soup kitchen where the community sings about the lack of rain. The set for this scene is fairly realistic – the tables, chairs, coffee urn, stage and podium, a piano, linoleum on the floor, cabinets in the back, religious banners on the wall, one side with doors and windows with light shining in. But for the rest of the show the set is much less realistic – the Joad truck is assembled out of tables and benches with Al holding a steering wheel, for instance. And all this plays out in front of the basics of the soup kitchen, its stage, floor, cabinets, and wall of windows. I enjoy theater that uses sets that conjure a car out of tables and chairs. That is something live theater can do very well. But the realism of the first scene and lack of realism for the rest of the story didn’t sit well with me.

There was one aspect of that realistic first scene I think they got wrong. Just outside those big windows is water dripping. Lights shining through the windows project the dripping water onto the back wall of the set. It’s a cool effect. Except… they’re singing about an endless drought. They even blow dust off their soup bowls. No way can there be water dripping off the roof.

Even with those quibbles I enjoyed the opera very much.

Taiwan!

Some stuff that’s accumulated in my browser tabs while I’ve been watching Cinetopia films…

Back in 2017 Taiwan’s constitutional court struck down the part of the civil code that says marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman. The court gave the legislature two years to fix the situation. And yesterday, they did, choosing the option that uses the word “marriage” and even allows some adoption rights. The bill passed 66-27. Taiwan is the first country in Asia to legalize marriage equality.



CivicScience conducted a poll on this question: “Should schools in America teach Arabic Numerals as part of their school curriculum?” 56% of the responses were no.

I hope you recognize this was a trick question. The numbers we use in every day life – 1, 2, 3 and all the rest – are called Arabic numerals to distinguish them from Roman numerals – I, II, III and so forth.

The results prompted a tweet from CivicScience CEO John Dick:

Ladies and Gentlemen: The saddest and funniest testament to American bigotry we've ever seen in our data.

Dick adds that when the results were split by party the GOP responses were 72% no.



In response to the restrictive abortion ban in Alabama and an almost as restrictive ban just passed in Missouri, Matthew Dowd shared this:

We should pass a woman’s Heartbeat Law: if a woman has a heartbeat, you can’t tell her what to do with her body, ever.

Truthout tweeted:

If minimum wage had increased at the same rate as the average Wall Street bonus since 1985, it would be $33 today, instead of $7.25.

They have an article to go with their tweet.



A few days ago conductor Karina Canellakis made her debut with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. It went well, but not as planned. Just before the scheduled concert start, pianist Daniil Trifonov, became ill and had to be taken to the hospital. That sounds like an orchestra manager’s big nightmare.

At the scheduled start of the concert the librarian started handing out replacement music – Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony – to the orchestra already on stage. Though they would play it after intermission it still meant there was no time to rehearse. Canellakis had conducted it once before – five months ago. This symphony is considered part of the standard repertoire, but the newest members hadn’t played it before. Even though they played it cold, they played it well. Bass player Scott Feltham posted about it afterward, adding, “Time for a beer.”

Trifonov was well enough to perform in the second and third concerts of the series.

Controversial artist

My fourth selection from the Cinetopia Film Festival wasn’t a documentary, but a biopic, titled Mapplethorpe. Actors recreated scenes from the life of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. His photos are quite artistic. But some cringe from a frequent subject matter – naked men and women, sometimes emphasizing the private parts.

As Mapplethorpe was approaching death from AIDS he helped put together a solo exhibit. It toured to several galleries after his death. One gallery pulled out to avoid risking a grant from the National Endowment from the Arts. The head of a gallery in Cincinnati was arrested on obscenity charges when the show opened there. But since that happened after Mapplethorpe’s death the movie merely mentioned it at the close.

The movie was interesting, but not fascinating. It showed him developing as an artist, meeting the people who would help him advance in the art world, his lovers, and his estrangement from his family – his parents didn’t approve of his ways. His brother Edward eventually became an assistant, though even that was a bit rocky.

You can see some of his work at his foundation’s website. Though the movie wasn’t stellar, the artwork is.

Life is … messy

Yesterday I attended two more films in the Cinetopia Film Festival. Both were shown in Royal Oak at the same theater complex. Fortunately I had about 50 minutes between them for supper.

The first was the documentary A Polar Year. Anders of Denmark applies to be a teacher in Greenland, a Danish territory. He doesn’t take the assignment in the capital, but the one in the tiny village of 80 people. The functionary arranging things tells him he is to teach the children Danish – and he will have no need to learn the local language. That’s a sign of colonial mentality.

He has about a dozen elementary age students (classes for middle school and older are in the city). The students mostly ignore him because he seems to have nothing to add to their lives. He complains to parents that Asser, an 8 year old boy, has missed a lot of class and it will be hard to make it up. The parents reply Asser was hunting with his grandfather. The boy will learn more and more important things from his grandfather than from Anders.

And, indeed, we watch grandfather in action.

Anders knows he’s not a respected member of the village. He asks for lessons in the local language. He asks for training in managing a sled and dogs. He joins a couple of men who take Asser on a hunting trip, where he watches the men build an igloo when a storm rises and where they decide to not shoot a polar bear because she is with cubs. I wondered what the men thought of riding three sleds pulled by dogs through the snow as a helicopter flew overhead filming them.

When Anders took the job his parents were disappointed. Later, we find out why – his father was the fifth generation farming their land and expected Anders to be the sixth. But Anders wasn’t interested. Taking up teaching in Greenland was his way to get off the farm.

When spring comes Anders and Asser are good friends. The film ends then. Anders’ contracted year in Greenland ended in the summer of 2016 and we are told that in 2018 he was still there.



The second film was the documentary Man Made. There really is such a thing as a body building contest for transgender men. To qualify one must identify as a transgender male and it doesn’t matter how far along one is in his transition. We follow four men who intend to enter the contest and follow them for several months leading up to it. And we find that life is … messy.

In those months Dominick has his top surgery – the removal of his breasts. He doesn’t work out as much as he’d like during recovery, so isn’t as lean as he would like to be. He is adopted and his parents are supportive of his transition. After the surgery he finds his birth mother and has a reunion with her. He warns her of the change in the little girl she had named Dominique.

Rese becomes homeless so he and his preschool son, who calls him Mommy, live with his parents. He finds a job and starts a relation with a transgender woman who also has a child. They move to Baltimore, where the headlines are full of murders of transgender women. They don’t feel so safe.

Mason seems most dedicated to the sport, complete with following a rigid diet. I don’t remember a lot of his complicated love life and backstory. I do remember him telling his fellow contestants to be thankful for the moment. They’re in an environment that is safe for them being trans. They don’t have to hide their bodies, instead are able to put them on display. That includes displaying their top surgery scars or displaying that they haven’t done the surgery yet.

Kennie is just beginning his transition. He holds a party to celebrate his first testosterone injection. The cupcakes are all decorated with “It’s a boy!” Kennie’s partner is lesbian. So far in their relationship having a butch woman as her partner is just fine, but she frets that as Kennie transitions and his body becomes more masculine she won’t remain attracted to him. His parents aren’t supportive.

The afternoon before the competition was the Atlanta Pride Parade, in which several contestants participated. Along the parade route were protest groups yelling such things as, “If you’re born a man, your a man. If you’ve got that Y [chromosome], you’re a man.” This inspires Dominick to be more of an activist. We then see the competition, of just 11 men. We hear a bit of the other contestants’ backstories. I won’t tell you who won.

Dominick was there in the theater and after the showing told us about how he met the filmmaker (at the previous bodybuilding event) and appreciated it was a trans filmmaker who was telling the story of trans people.

Here comes the sun!

Senator Ed Markey tweeted a link about solar energy with this comment:

Not only is 2 million solar installations a huge milestone in the transition to 100% clean and renewable energy, consider the countless jobs this mobilization is supporting and creating. For the sake of our economy and our future, here comes the sun!

The headline to this CNBC story is “Solar Installations in US exceed 2 million and could double by 2023… The milestone comes three years after installations hit 1 million.”

In response to Markey’s tweet there was, of course, lots of pushback.



With over 20 Democratic candidates for president it might be hard to decide which is best. Dave Johnson tweeted that he’s got this:

I figured out which candidate I'm for. That candidate's name is:
#GreenNewDeal
Medicare-for-All
Federal Job Guarantee
Free Public College
Reparations Commission
Jail the Corrupt
and a few other things for a last name.

Billionaires in space

I’d like to say I’ve been a space enthusiast ever since the Mercury program (I wasn’t quite five when Shepard went up, 13 when Armstrong walked on the moon). I’ve enjoyed many space movies, such as the recent Apollo 11, last year’s First Man, Apollo 13 from many years ago, and Space Camp from 33 years ago, among others. I get the Smithsonian Air and Space magazine for the space articles. But I haven’t actually attended a launch. And I rarely check the NASA website. That tells you about my level of enthusiasm.

So when articles like this appear I at least pay attention.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote about the announcement that billionaire Jeff Bezos has released detailed plans for getting humans off earth and onto the moon and into floating cities in space. Bezos certainly has the personal fortune to make it happen.

Elon Musk, another billionaire, is working towards getting humans to Mars.

The announcement by Bezos included plans that look robust, fascinating, and impressive (I haven’t seen them myself). With their fortunes it is likely both men will succeed.

There are a good reasons for doing it. Getting colonies in space is good in case something happens to earth. I’ve heard that described as making sure all our eggs aren’t in one basket. Of course, there are the old reasons, such as humans should be in space to be there and to do science on site. There’s the practical reason, Bezos doesn’t have to worry that Congress will cut his funding. And the disappointing reason that our government has lost interest in space (this is more than the nasty guy, it was Obama who canceled the Orion capsule), so we are glad that someone is going to space.

But Sumner and I have a problem with billionaires going into space. They’re doing this rather than allowing themselves to be taxed enough that the government could do it. First, Sumner:

The real problem is that there are individuals with the kind of wealth and power to make that possible. The ultimate result of a system that channels all money into fewer and fewer hands, is that those hands make the decisions. Unchecked.

We have an economic system that allows individuals to secure the ability to make decisions for all of us, to profoundly alter the world and the future for generations. It’s not the first time. Previous generations of millionaires shaped transportation and communications in ways that defined where cities were built and how communities were formed. Millions of Americans, perhaps most, live where they live now because of decisions made by some railroad baron or industrial titan who defined the landscape a century ago.

Now billionaires are going further. And farther. What they’re doing is already altering the basic economics of access to space in ways that have only begun to impact everyday life. But the impacts will be profound. They will also be long lasting.

It’s easy to make fun of the nerdy exuberance of Bezos or the technocratic fervor of Musk, but they are genuinely on the edge of creating a future that is almost entirely under their control—a future that will greatly impact the future for everyone, everywhere.

In summary, they get to decide access to space and impose their choices on the rest of us.

So, based on that, here are my comments:
When Bezos and Musk pay for the ride they get to choose who goes into space. And since being a billionaire is, in my understanding, inherently supremacist, I can guess who they will allow to go into space. They’ll probably all be white and likely from the upper end of income earners.

I mentioned the need to get some humans off earth in case something happens to it. Alas, something – global warming – is happening to it and people like Bezos stand in the way of doing what we need to so the environment is protected.

Similar to words by supremacists everywhere Bezos is saying I am making it possible for humans to go to space. He isn’t saying he’ll support taxes so that we can go into space.



About that comment that billionaires are inherently supremacist…

Wealth-X says that San Francisco has the highest density of billionaires in the world – higher than New York, Dubai, and Hong Kong. The Bay Area Economic Council reports they Bay Area’s homeless crisis ranks among the worst in the United States. Those things happened together.

Walther Einenkel of Daily Kos says that in San Francisco there are about 375 homeless people for every billionaire.

I’ll add a bit of math to that. If each rich dude spent about 20% of their first billion – leaving $800,000,000 plus all their other billions – they could buy a half-million dollar home for each homeless person. I know the real estate market in the Bay Area is crazy. A half-million house in the Detroit area is a pretty snazzy hunk of house. In the Bay Area that might be average.

A milestone

With this blog post I’ve reached another milestone. This is post 4000! I’ve reached this point in almost 11.5 years of blogging, having started Nov. 17, 2007.

In this time and over this number of posts I discussed gay marriage and marriage equality 686 times (though, thankfully not much recently), the GOP 614 times, Barack Obama 212 times over nine years and the nasty guy 209 times over four years. Also in the highest used labels are personal stories (381), fundamentalism (282), gay acceptance (255), bigotry (250) and church bigotry (167).

I crossed 1000 posts in the spring of 2010 (I’m not going to search for an exact date). 2000 posts came in January 2012. I got to 3000 in the fall of 2015.

Here is a sample of my posts through the years. It is not a highlight reel. I chose months for no particular reason. Alas, a lot of the topics have stayed the same over the years. In June of 2008 I wrote about:

A trip to Alaska with my parents. I posted no photos because I was still using a film camera.

A little amendment that Phil Gramm inserted into a must-pass bill in 2000 that was a big reason for the economic collapse that started that year – “Conservatism creates a secret casino. It is always open and the players never lose. As for the rest of us, we get stuck with the bailouts and the damage to our communities.”

Dr. Robert Gagnon used some twisted scholarship to show the Bible disapproves of gays.

In October of 2009 I wrote about:

Being a part of a phone campaign to preserve same-sex marriage in Maine (it lost that year) and that Barack Obama had a LGBT Civil Rights Scorecard.

The incompatibility of health care and the profit motive. There is a word for those that have no problem with 45,000 deaths and 700,000 bankruptcies: sociopath. And the more sociopathic a health care insurance company is the more profitable it is.

The appearance of the Conservative Bible, an attempt to purge the inerrant word of God of its liberal bias.

In March 2011 I wrote about:

In America 400 people have as much wealth as 155 million. “These rich people are now afraid of us demanding our money back.”

The Ohio Senate passed a bill that stripped domestic partner benefits from university and city workers, saying it was necessary to balance the state budget.

In September 2012 I wrote about:

I took a bus trip to Charlotte, NC to take part in a Labor Day weekend protest at Wall Street South and the Democratic National Convention (to open a couple days later).

“This argument about needing both a mother and father is only applied to gay couples. It is not applied to the society as a whole. Is it in the best interest of the child to have a parent with a debilitating disease, addicted to drugs, with a criminal record, or living in poverty?”

“Should we take care of the poor? If so, how? The GOP platform trumpets God. But they answer the first question with a resounding no. The Dems didn't do any trumpeting, but said yes to the first and gave a detailed answer for the second.”

In March 2014 I wrote about:

Same-sex marriage began in England and Wales, began early in Illinois, and briefly appeared in Michigan.

In September 2015 I wrote about:

The limits of privatization of public services through the book *What Money Can’t Buy, the Moral Limits of Markets* by Michael J. Sandel.

Pushback against same-sex marriage, such as Kim Davis refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Kentucky.

In May 2017 I wrote about:

Advancement in artificial intelligence means computers taking over more jobs. This won’t be a paradise because more money will go into the pockets of those already rich. The social hierarchy will be reinforced. Automation will be a massive disruption and we’re not talking about it.

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra performed The Defiant Requiem, the story of Giuseppi Verdi’s Requiem being sung in the Terezin concentration camp. The Jewish inmates could sing this Catholic service as a way of resisting their captors, singing what they could not say.

I know some of you have read every one of these 4000 posts. I thank you for being a faithful reader.

Tragically self-destructive

Just a few weeks after the Freep Film Fest comes the Cinetopia Film Festival. The big difference between the two is the Freep Fest is only documentaries and the Cinetopia Fest includes feature films, though the four I plan to see this year are all documentaries.

The one I saw today was Making Montgomery Clift made by his nephew Robert Clift. The actor had a film career from 1948 until his early death in 1966 at age 45. He was quite handsome, which attracted Hollywood’s attention. But towards the end of his career he was described as “tragically self-destructive,” “tormented,” and, because of his drinking, committing “the longest suicide in Hollywood history.” Robert Clift made the film to find the truth.

The filmmaker had a lot to work with. His father and Monty’s brother, Brooks Clift, recorded everything and saved all the memorabilia about Monty.

The reason for the “torment” was Monty was bisexual, having affairs with women and men, with his final live-in lover a man. In the early 1960s gay men were supposed to be tormented. And Monty’s first biographer set out to prove exactly that. He even pulled in all the “reasons” why men become gay, such as being too closely attached to his mother. Brooks found that one to be weird – so why was Brooks not gay?

So when a second biographer wanted to write Monty’s story Brooks became quite involved. He wanted to protect his brother’s reputation. But he was ultimately betrayed by the publishers. It was better than the first biography, but still not good.

That “longest suicide” supposedly happened after a car crash in 1856 that severely injured Monty. He relied on pills and alcohol for the rest of his life, as the Hollywood story goes.

But Robert says not so fast. Monty made as many movies after the accident as he did before. He wasn’t suicidal. He had a lot to live for. He wasn’t tormented over his sexuality. Robert thinks the decline didn’t happen until after Monty appeared in a film directed by John Huston. Robert thinks Huston was appalled that Monty had a gay tryst after one of Huston’s parties and Huston blamed all the production difficulties on Monty.

As for the reputation of “troubled” Robert says it is from the 1961 movie Judgment at Nuremberg. Monty’s character has a mental breakdown onscreen. A lot of Hollywood thought Monty played the scene so well because the actor was having a mental breakdown.

One other aspect of Monty’s career was discussed. While young he was a well known stage actor. But he continually refused Hollywood’s riches because those came with multi-year contract that required him to take whatever role the studio handed him. But Monty wanted full control of the roles he played.

That even included rewriting dialog, both his own and that of other characters. In his first film, The Search, Monty rewrote a lot. That must have been to great effect because Monty was nominated for best actor in a leading role and the writers won for best screenplay. Monty didn’t share that win because he wasn’t a credited writer.

When the Judgment move came along the studio wanted Monty for the lead. Monty wasn’t interested in that character – too boring. But he was so fascinated with the character who has the breakdown he offered to do the role for free.

This particular film was shown in Ann Arbor. The others I plan to see will be in Royal Oak and Detroit. After the late afternoon movie I planned to go to a small restaurant for supper. As I got close to it I saw the street was blocked off to cars for a street fair, another part of Cinetopia. And a band, on a stage just outside the restaurant, was starting to play. It was going to be way too loud for me in that restaurant. I went home.

Designed to grow debt

Alexandra Erin tweeted a thread:

Something we really don't talk about nearly enough in this country is how much the economy *depends* on people being in debt, how much corporate profiteering is driven by consumer debt and student debt.

People love to throw around the term "moral hazard" when we talk about debt relief. Moral hazard is basically the danger that people will take advantage if we make it clear their actions will have no consequences. The term is basically only invoked these days to cover the "moral hazard" of individual people who go into debt and then get bailed out, but as a concept it covers (and in fact fits better) what happens when we *allow* lenders to create those conditions in the first place.
...
We have built our economy around debt, and we are not going to change that by attacking individual people's financial choices. The system is designed to encourage debt, lock in debt, grow debt. One person's debt is literally another person's investment. And there comes a point (a point I'd argue we're far past) where we have to say to the people who have been extending the credit: well, what did you expect? They have made unwise investments! We can bail them out... by paying off the debt... but that's it. We're closing the shop.

We can reconfigure consumer credit into something that is useful but not usurious, something sustainable, but we can't keep doing things the way we've been doing them.

Eric Rowe replied:

When I last visited America I was just driving down the street in Fresno and it was obvious that the major industry in town was 'poverty'. Everything was built around maintaining and providing for it. Fast food, government support services, charities, and homeless people everywhere. The vast majority of stores dollar shops selling junk that caters to a marketing driven need for stuff that won't pull them up the ladder, but instead limit their opportunities.

Max Kennerly describes himself as a trial lawyer by day and cookie monster by night. In a Twitter thread he notes the differences in penalties between white collar crime and the crimes that working people commit. He quotes a tweet from Sarah Kendzior:

The GOP has been hijacked by a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government. This is not a secret.

Then Kennerly replies:

Thus, this hijacking was made possible in part because the GOP, Wall Street, and corporate America spent years creating a Swiss-cheese legal framework in which even trivial amounts of complexity or deniability renders political corruption lawful.

Get over it

Ohio is as heavily gerrymandered as Michigan is. And, just like Michigan, Ohio was taken to court and its maps declared unconstitutional. Rich Exner of Cleveland.com explains that prisons are an important part of those gerrymandered maps.

In Ohio prison inmates aren’t allowed to vote. So what better way to make a district equal in population yet tilt the vote in the GOP’s favor than a parcel of land with people who can’t vote at all. Prisoners tend to be from highly Democratic areas, yet the prisons are in rural areas. A few GOP districts have little bumps and hooks to include a nearby prison.



For more than two years now people who voted for the nasty guy have been telling Hillary Clinton supporters your candidate lost, get over it. Randi Mayem Singer tweeted:

I'm tired of people telling me I haven't gotten over Hillary losing when they still haven't gotten over Robert E. Lee and Hitler losing.

That’s followed by lots of comments by people who seem to intentionally misunderstand what she is saying.



A bit of fun. Artist Hirotoshi Ito has taken unpolished rocks, carved out the inside, and installed a zipper to make what looks like a soft coin purse. Or he adds a knife to make a hunk of rock look like soft bread being sliced. Find a few photos of his strange creations here.

A male politician who understands abortion

Cory Booker, campaigning to be the Democratic nominee for president, has been very vocal in support of abortion choice. He spoke because Georgia is close to having a “fetal heartbeat” law – banning abortion once the heartbeat of the fetus can be detected, which can happen well before a woman knows she is pregnant.

I’m not going to repeat Booker’s words, instead I’ll note the response of Melissa McEwan of Shakesville:

OMG let us count the many things that Booker gets right here! 1. I have never heard a male presidential candidate argue to codify abortion rights into law and that is SO GREAT. 2. He refers to abortion as a medical decision. 3. He says he will fight for a woman's right to make *her own* medical decisions and doesn't couch it in some bullshit language about how abortion is a decision between a woman, her doctor, her family, her pastor, etc. He makes clear that he regards it as *her* decision. 4. He acknowledges that abortion restrictions undermine women's bodily autonomy. 5. He notes that many abortion restrictions happen on the state level.

YES. This is a male politician, at long last, who I feel like I can trust actually understands the abortion fight.

In another post McEwan likes that Booker links abortion access to fair elections. Again in response to the Georgia efforts, Booker said:

Make no mistake: This is a direct result of an undemocratic election. If we had fair elections with fair district lines, Georgia's leadership would look a lot different, and the women of Georgia would not be relegated to second-class citizenhood.

Booker made that connection because last November Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp rigged the election so that he could beat out Stacy Abrams to become governor.

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported that Booker has announced a very strong statement on gun reform, stronger than the other Dem candidates. The proposal including a call to require licenses to own a gun. I like what he says.

I have not chosen a favorite among the swarm of Democratic candidates. However, Booker is in my top four. The others are Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Julian Castro. None of them are white males.

Yet, headlines still ponder whether a white male is a safer choice against the nasty guy. Kos of Daily Kos looked at the raw vote totals for presidential candidates over the last 20 years. The highest vote getters were the black man and the woman.

Self-impeachable

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has been saying for a long time now (perhaps two years) that for the nasty guy and his minions malice is the agenda. I add there is a reason for that. Malice – violence – is the most effective way to enforce a social hierarchy.

McEwan is now stepping it up a notch. She now rates the nasty guy as bloodthirsty. He wants violence at the southern border, through mass shootings, at abortion clinics, in minority religion houses of worship, and towards minority people. He also wants a war with his name on it.

Just yesterday in a rally in Panama City, FL the nasty guy indirectly called for violence against refugees on the border, against Hillary Clinton, and against Democrats for their immigration agenda and their desire to have babies killed by abortion. McEwan wrote:

If Democratic leadership cannot find any other reason to impeach this president, despite the preponderance of compelling rationales, perhaps they will consider the urgency of doing anything and everything to remove this man from office, before even more people end up dead.

Speaking of impeachment…

More than 600 former federal prosecutors signed a statement saying that even the redacted Mueller Report has enough evidence to charge the nasty guy with multiple felonies for obstruction of justice, who would be indicted if he wasn’t president (a rule created by Nixon).

Melissa McEwan concludes:

This statement make plain the crisis we face as a nation: If a president with contempt for the law is above the law, then there will never be any consequences for his lawbreaking, and our democracy is lost.

House Democrats must initiate impeachment proceedings immediately. The rule of law must matter.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has started issuing subpoenas for the full, unredacted Mueller Report (hey, Jerry, 600 prosecutors say the redacted version has enough info for impeachment).

In response the Justice Department and the nasty guy has declared that Nadler is doing an illegal overreach and now all Mueller Report info is under executive privilege.

So, yeah, your everyday normal constitutional crisis.



Back in January, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi stood up to the nasty guy I thought she was the right woman for the job. Now, with her unwillingness to hold impeachment hearings, I have my doubts.

Recently she said some strange things. First:

Trump is goading us to impeach him. That's what he's doing. Every single day, he's just like taunting, taunting, taunting because he knows that it would be very divisive in the country, but he doesn't really care. He just wants to solidify his base.

McEwan says that’s ridiculous.

Trump isn't going full fascist to goad the Democrats and solidify his base; he's going full fascist because that's the objective. He's the centerpiece around which the Republican Party is consolidating its power.

Animating his deplorable base and enraging anyone who still values our democracy and respects the rule of law are byproducts. They aren't the goals.

Besides, his base is already quite solid.

Second, in response to the nasty guy’s declaration of executive privilege, Pelosi said:

The point is that every single day, whether it's obstruction, obstruction, obstruction — obstruction of having people come to the table with facts, ignoring subpoenas ... every single day, the president is making a case — he's becoming self-impeachable, in terms of some of the things that he is doing.

Self-impeachable?

McEwan has a response to that. Self-impeachable isn’t a thing. Does Pelosi mean the nasty guy leaves no choice to impeach? Then say that.

McEwan suspects she means the nasty guy is making himself so vile people won’t vote for him and he’ll “self-impeach” himself out of office. Again, that’s ridiculous. His base loves his authoritarian behavior. And we are unlikely to have free and fair elections “especially if Congress refuses to even try to hold Trump accountable.”

So, Pelosi is looking more like an obstacle than an asset.

A better choice, though she’s in the Senate, would be Elizabeth Warren. She stood in the Senate chamber and called for impeachment. She did it there so that it would be part of the Congressional Record, even though it essentially makes her a target. She also contradicts Rep. Nadler in saying there is enough info in the redacted Mueller Report.

Won’t give up power

Angus Johnston is a professor at CUNY. He is a historian and an advocate of American Student Activism. He recently tweeted a thread about an interview Speaker Nancy Pelosi had with the New York Times. It’s a long thread, so I’ll only discuss highlights.

Pelosi said that she doesn’t trust that the nasty guy won’t give up power voluntarily if he loses the 2020 election.

Lots of people, especially those who study authoritarian regimes, have already pointed that out. But it is a big deal that the Speaker of the House is saying it. I’m pleased she recognizes the possibility.

So…

Why aren’t the mainstream and progressive media all over this story? This is the Speaker warning of a Constitutional crisis. The conservative press definitely is and we can guess how they’re trying to spin it (though I’m not wading in those waters to find out).

Why aren’t important follow up questions being asked? Such questions as… What does Pelosi think the nasty guy will do if he loses? What steps will she take to guard against that? What do other prominent Democrats think? Prominent Republicans? What do constitutional experts say?

Another question… This implies the nasty guy is planning to steal the election (as was done in 2016), so what is being done to prevent that? Hope for the best is a bad plan. If this is the plan how does telegraphing it to the GOP help? It normalizes the theft of the election.

The first tweet to comment is from ProudSkeptic:

I'm really concerned that she says this, yet doesn't take it seriously enough to call for impeachment. Pretty sure this is the perfect example of something impeachable.

Another response (on a different Twitter thread), from Deborah Roseman:

Apparently the plan is: When they go low, we... trip over them.

There is only power

I’ve started reading the Harry Potter series of books by J. K. Rowling. Yeah, I know the first book came out 22 years ago, the last 12 years ago. Even the last movie came out eight years ago (and I saw them all). Sometime after the last novel was released I bought the set of seven. I had a coupon for half price on one item and the box counted as one item.

And then the box sat in my closet of unread books. For a decade. Yeah, that sometimes happens.

I had intended to read the set and give them to my niece, who was about 9 at the time. But her mother said she wasn’t interested – the story was too dark. So my incentive to quickly read them disappeared.

And a couple weeks ago I decided it was time. I read the first book in about five days and very much enjoyed it, even though my teen years were a long time ago. I had read it before, the only one of the set I had previously read. But that was maybe 15 years ago, well before I bought the set. In reading it again I didn’t remember what I had read the first time, but did remember some scenes from the movie.

The set of books is the story of Harry Potter’s struggle against his nemesis Lord Voldemort. In the first novel Voldemort’s protege is Professor Quirrell.

A difference this time is my current understanding of power and supremacy. So a couple sentences spoken by Quirrell at the climax scene resonated with me.

A foolish young man I was then, full of ridiculous ideas about good and evil. Lord Voldemort showed me how wrong I was. There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.

They resonated with me because they encapsulate the basics of my current understanding of supremacy. These sentences are something that a supremacist, someone with or wishing for a lot of power, would say. They would say it as a way of justifying what they do. If there is no good and evil I can do what I want.

There very much is good an evil in the world. And, in my understanding, all evil is the result of supremacy, the enforcement of societal ranking. A supremacist works to gain power. The purpose of that power is to oppress others. The reason for that oppression is to demonstrate the powerful has power over others and thus is higher in the social hierarchy, to demonstrate the life of the powerful is indeed better and more important than the lives of the oppressed, and to prevent those without power from climbing the social hierarchy.

I’m reading something else at the moment. The second book is probably next. The first is the shortest of the series, about 300 pages. The longest is almost three times as long. I’m sure there is a lot in those longer books that didn’t get into the corresponding movie.

The smoke was thick

The Democrats are talking about censuring AG Wiliam Barr if he doesn’t testify before the House Judicial Committee. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville wrote, after the censure, then what?

So, more discussion of impeachment.

McEwan says that because we’re debating whether the nasty guy should be impeached, that’s a reason to impeach.

If, four years ago, someone described a hypothetical president who has done the crimes the nasty guy has done members of Congress of both parties would not hesitate in saying the president should be impeached.

Now two years into his term he has shifted the parameters so much that faced with those same crimes all we do is debate.

That discrepancy is a reason to impeach.



Eric Schmeltzer tweeted a thread:

Fact is, no one knows what will happen to impeachment numbers in polls, if Congress begins inquiry hearings. It is all guessing! But, it was the same in 1973, when polling said, after the Saturday Night Massacre, only 37 percent favored removal of Nixon.

He includes a chart of Nixon’s approval rating along with the percent of those who think he should be removed. Towards the end of July 1974 those who want him gone cross 50% and are at 57% by the time Nixon resigned.

Back then, like today, Dems (and everyone else) had no idea if pursuing impeachment would change those numbers, or backfire.

What Dems did know is that the smoke was thick around Nixon, and investigation and impeachment hearings may find the fire -- so it was their duty to pursue it. They had basically NO GOP support at the outset.

The idea that they had a cooperative GOP for impeachment is a myth.
...
Dems can either convince themselves that the risks aren't hypothetical, but real as the sun rising, or they can say they do not know, and the only certain thing is that they're running out of options, as Trump defies subpoenas.

In 1973 and 74, no one knew where impeachment would go.

They DID know they didn't have polls, or Senate GOP votes, on their side.

But, they did what was right, and polls slowly joined them.

Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund tweeted a thread on the news that the nasty guy and AG Barr are ordering federal employees to ignore congressional subpoenas:

There are so many outrages, but at the level of whether our democracy survives intact, this is the most important story of today, tomorrow & the forseeable future. And I cannot understand the silence of most of my profession at this dangerous, frontal challenge to the rule of law. The rule of law is not partisan. Neither is separation of powers. Speaking up for the rule of law should not fall to civil rights lawyers, Democratic Party lawyers or Never Trumpers. Every lawyer who has taken the oath to defend the Constitution must speak, must stand. I have been waiting for the full measure of voices who lead our profession to speak powerfully, unequivocally & publicly. The law firm partners. The former govt. attorneys. The law profs. Our profession will not recover from the failure to fight collectively for the rule of law.

In violation of “do no harm”

The nasty guy regime has issued new rules that strengthen the case of health care workers and entire hospitals if they want to refuse healthcare services to which they have a religious objection. We know who they have religious objections to – women needing abortions, LGBT – especially the trans people needing reassignment surgery, and other minorities.

Melissa McEwan says it is extremely bad news. And we knew that.

McEwan explained: First the irony of handwringing over having to “take human life” when the purpose of this rule is to refuse to provide life-saving healthcare to those they find distasteful. Second, the rules won’t be applied to religious minorities – unless their objections align with the toxic bigotries of the evangelical Christians the rules are designed to empower. Third, this is in violation of the medical mandate to “do no harm.” She wrote:

If you sign up to be a healthcare provider, you bloody well provide healthcare.
…
The vile irony of this trash is that asking for on-the-job exemptions from primary duties based on religious beliefs is nothing less than the "special rights" conservatives are incessantly accusing the LGBTQ community, women, and other marginalized populations of seeking.
…
It's bad enough when it's some asshole who doesn't want to issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples or bake a cake for their wedding, but "conscience clauses" in the field of medicine, where lives depend on people who don't hesitate, who put patients' needs before their own desires, such a willful dereliction of duty is thoroughly contemptible.

It is immoral. It will be deadly.

The resources of the federal government

You think the nasty guy demonizing Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign was bad? In the 2020 race he’ll have the resources of the federal government to help him destroy the Democratic nominee. That’s what Paul Waldman at the Washington Post said. For example:

Do you think Trump would hesitate for an instant before telling [Attorney General William] Barr to open an investigation of the Democratic nominee for president? And given everything we've seen from Barr, do you think he’d refuse that order?

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville added:

And of course much of the political press is going to assist Trump in leveraging the power of the U.S. federal government to destroy his opponent(s), under the auspices of "campaign coverage," without clear indication of the role they are playing in undermining the integrity of both U.S. elections and the very U.S. government itself.

United Methodist Judicial Council has ruled

The Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church has ruled on the components of the Traditional Plan passed by General Conference last February. The JC has declared some pieces to be unconstitutional and will permit others to go into effect in January. Read more on my brother blog.

Kind of let him wither in the wind

Attorney General William Barr went before the Senate Judiciary Committee (under GOP control). After it was over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused him of lying and a few other Dems calling for his resignation or impeachment. Today Barr was supposed to go before the House Judiciary Committee (under Dem control) and didn’t show up.

That prompted Melissa McEwan of Shakesville to show an exchange between Barr and Senator Amy Klobuchar and then summarize:

In other words, the answer is no. Donald Trump's actions have not been consistent with his oath of office. We didn't need the Attorney General to confirm that, but there it is.

In a separate post McEwan added:

Barr did not fail to show up because he's afraid. To the absolute contrary, he failed to show up because the Republican Party has consolidated power so thoroughly that a Democratic House majority no longer matters, and the Trump Regime will take every opportunity to show that.

Sarah Kendzior tweeted, quoting her Gaslit Nation podcast:

The Trump team can't resist showing off. They love to be caught, they just hate being punished. And that's their weakness: this autocratic flaunting. They need everyone to see that they've pulled one over on them, as a matter of ego.

I’ll expand that just a bit. They love being caught because it is a way of showing how much power they have – see, I can flaunt the law, flaunt any kind of ethics you want to name, and even flaunt common decency because I know you can’t do anything about it. And while they hate being punished, the entire GOP is doing all it can to make sure they aren’t.

I’m convinced the only chance of a way out is impeachment. And I’m very much aware that probably won’t succeed.

Some say wait for the next election. McEwan takes a moment to explain why as a comment to Hillary Clinton warning of threats to democracy.

While everyone else is busily pretending that we're just going to have a normal election — despite the evidence that our elections will be neither free nor fair, owing to some combination of foreign interference, bigotry wielded against marginalized candidates, Republican voter suppression efforts, inaccessibility of voting, gerrymandering, hacking, social media manipulation, vanity candidates and their catastrophic egos, purity leftists, wannabe spoilers, obvious Kremlin agents, bots, trolls, ratfuckers, and everything else that conspires to undermine our democracy — Hillary Clinton is out here warning us that, if we don't get our shit together, our election could become a proxy war for foreign interlopers.

And yet again, we will fail to heed her warning. To our own peril.

So waiting for the next election won’t get us out of this mess. Alas…

Daniel Dale, the Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star, talked to Democratic county chairs around the country about impeachment.

There was a consensus that Trump had committed impeachable offences, but lots of skepticism that it's the right thing to do given Trump's talent for using perceived victimhood. One said impeachment would be obvious in a "fully functioning democracy," but not in the current U.S.

The overriding concern of the skeptics was the possibility of voter backlash, especially from Trump’s base. John Sweda, the party chair in Sandoval County, New Mexico, said it would be “better just to kind of let him wither in the wind and be a diminished figure” than to do something that “would really energize the right a lot.”

Oh, Mr. Sweda … the nasty guy is not going to “wither.” If we don’t oust him he will only grow stronger. In addition, why are you so worried about an energized right base? It’s only about 35% of the country. And the nasty guy is already constantly energizing them. What about the larger progressive base? Impeachment would energize them too, and failing to impeach will turn them completely off.

But don’t rely on my grumbling. Here’s Kendzior, who studies authoritarianism:

Every scholar of authoritarian states I know -- that is, people who've studied dictatorship for decades -- recommends impeachment hearings. Most of the Dems don't grasp the actual dynamics, in terms of both duty and spectacle, and seem to have no interest in learning.

It is also possible to do both, to begin impeachment investigations and to work like crazy to defeat the GOP in the next election.