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Nov 19, 2019
Today's Tweet
The only shot Repubs have is to turn the hearings it into something they're not.
Replublicans readying for today's impeachment hearings 🐾💕 pic.twitter.com/01KIwZeEt1— Jay Arnold 🏳️🌈 (@JadedCreative) November 19, 2019
Today's Today
156 years ago, a little over 4 months after the fight, Lincoln speaks for about 2 minutes, and in the 272 words, says everything that could be said at the time.
3 days of battle. 7,000 dead. 11,000 missing. 32,000 wounded.
I think it can be said that there are wars more justifiable than others, but there is no such thing as a good war, any more than there is the real possibility of "winning" a war.
Whoever loses the least, or outlasts the opponent, gets to claim "victory", but nobody wins anything in a war.
3 days of battle. 7,000 dead. 11,000 missing. 32,000 wounded.
I think it can be said that there are wars more justifiable than others, but there is no such thing as a good war, any more than there is the real possibility of "winning" a war.
Whoever loses the least, or outlasts the opponent, gets to claim "victory", but nobody wins anything in a war.
Nov 18, 2019
Today's Charlie
Charlie Pierce, Esquire Magazine (rerun from a while back - worth repeating)
"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing "Amazing Grace" in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.
And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.
The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides.
Watch him make fun of the woman again. Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut the fuck up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.
Watch him make fun of the woman again. Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut the fuck up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.
Watch him again, behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now."
Yeah, About That
So, back in 2012, there was quite an effort to revamp and re-brand the GOP. They realized they were perceived as not being down with the good folks of the "Real America" - that the Romney campaign had boomeranged away from McCain's "Just folks and Straight Talk" bullshit, and had shown the party as catering to the elite, with Willard's dumbass "gaffe" of the 47% being the perfect illustration of how badly out of touch Republicans had become.
So they embarked on the project to re-connect with the good people - the workin' guy - the common clay of the heartland. You know - the rubes.
It's not turning out quite the way they said they wanted it to turn out. Which is not to say it's not turning out the way somebody intended it, but that's another foil hat rant for another time.
Let's just say they're -
G.utless
O.bsequious
P.honies
- and let that suffice for now.
Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:
When listening to President Trump and fellow Republicans throw around accusations against Democrats and the media or advance defenses for Trump’s impeachable conduct, there is a better than even chance they are misleading if not downright lying. In some cases, we discover the lies because other individuals are caught lying.
Roger Stone was convicted, among other things, of lying to Congress about his conversations with WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange. He falsely claimed: He had no emails, documents or texts relating to WikiLeaks; he never sought damaging information (i.e., emails) about Hillary Clinton; never contacted WikiLeaks through intermediaries; and never contacted the Trump campaign about WikiLeaks. The last lie — denying contacts with the Trump campaign — raises the question as to whether President Trump lied in responses to Robert S. Mueller II.
At the trial we learned about Stone’s numerous contacts with the campaign:
Rick Gates, who served as Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, testified Tuesday that Stone began discussing Clinton leaks with the campaign in April 2016 and that from May onward Gates understood Stone to be the campaign’s intermediary with WikiLeaks. By July 2016, Gates testified, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said he was updating Trump and others regularly and directed Gates to keep following up with Stone. After Trump ended one phone call from Stone at the end of that month, Gates testified, the future president said to Gates that “more information would be coming.”In his written answers, however, Trump claimed he had “no recollection” of conversations with Stone about WikiLeaks nor did he recall knowing Stone had discussed WikiLeaks’s email drops with the campaign. Perhaps Trump’s memory is addled; if not, it appears he lied to Mueller.
For most of us, it's not hard to see the truth about the GOP's long slide into the shit pile of distilled concentrated hatred.
But it's also pretty easy to see how, for some, it seems like it all happened suddenly.
It didn't.
I'll say this again: Trump has not remade the GOP in his own image. He's the near-perfect reflection of what the Republican Party has been morphing into for at least 30 years.
Ms Rubin is pointing out just one of the main aspects of a political party that's been trying so hard to hang onto the fantasy of some glorious past that it's lost touch with reality altogether.
And it's gotten to the point where it seems like they have to lie about everything. As if all they can do now is try to reinforce one lie with another - to cover up, or to compensate for one lie with the next.
Likewise, in the Ukraine matter multiple witnesses gave testimony that suggests that Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland has been telling falsehoods under oath. Some he has remedied, such as his initial statement that he had not communicated to the Ukrainians that military aid was dependent upon their opening an investigation into the Bidens. However, we now know from at least one other witness that Sondland’s denial that he spoke to the president or to the State Department was false. (He spoke to both.) One wonders if he’ll share a similar fate as Stone, the former Trump confidant who this week was found guilty on charges of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
The Trump lies relating to Ukraine are numerous and serious, although not delivered under oath. CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale has documented 45 Trump lies concerning Ukraine including:
Trump did not ask [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky for anything on the call. (Trump asked Zelensky to look into former Vice President Joe Biden, look into a debunked conspiracy theory about Democratic computer servers, and speak with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr.)
Zelensky criticized former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch “out of the blue” on the call. (Trump brought up Yovanovitch first.) . . . .
The whistleblower was “sooo wrong.” (The rough transcript and witness testimony have proven the whistleblower to have been highly accurate.) . . .
Schiff might have been the whistleblower’s source. (This is nonsense. The whistleblower said in the complaint that information about the call came from “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call.”)Other Trump lies include his denial that United States military aid was held up, his bizarre accusations that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) was the whistleblower’s source and his unfounded allegations that former vice president Joe Biden “stole” millions of dollars from foreign countries and pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor when Hunter Biden was still under investigation.
House Republicans continually traffic in lies — e.g., Ukraine interfered with our election, Joe Biden’s conduct pressuring removal of a delinquent prosecutor was illegal or corrupt, Trump was concerned about Ukraine’s corruption in general.
The bad news is that lots of Repubs are still in charge of some very important places, and they continue to ramp up their attempts to scotch the elections.
And I think it's a very safe bet that they're still getting plenty of help from the Russians.
Today's Tweet
"The Great Deal Maker" can't even get what he needs from a 3rd rate tin pot dictator like Kim.
And why? Because he gives everything away up front. He just says, "Yeah OK, whatever you want, Mr Prospect. Take it all." And then he acts surprised when they don't respect him - when they don't give him what he wants in return - and all he can do is attack them in one of his stoopid little PR smears, or just shut up and slink away.
Worst. Fucking. Salesman. Ever.
A day after Trump tweeted “see you soon!” and the US canceled another joint military exercise, North Korea says it is not “interested” in further meetings with US.— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) November 18, 2019
“We will no longer give the US president something to boast about for nothing in return”, says NK For. Ministry
Nov 17, 2019
The Great Divide
"The republic cannot endure half Fox News and half free." --driftglass
Adam Przeworski, a political scientist who has studied struggling democracies in Eastern Europe and Latin America, has argued that to survive, democratic institutions “must give all the relevant political forces a chance to win from time to time in the competition of interests and values.” But, he adds, they also have to do something else, of equal importance: “They must make even losing under democracy more attractive than a future under non-democratic outcomes.” That conservatives—despite currently holding the White House, the Senate, and many state governments—are losing faith in their ability to win elections in the future bodes ill for the smooth functioning of American democracy. That they believe these electoral losses would lead to their destruction is even more worrying.
We should be careful about overstating the dangers. It is not 1860 again in the United States—it is not even 1850. But numerous examples from American history—most notably the antebellum South—offer a cautionary tale about how quickly a robust democracy can weaken when a large section of the population becomes convinced that it cannot continue to win elections, and also that it cannot afford to lose them.
the collapse of the mainstream Republican Party in the face of Trumpism is at once a product of highly particular circumstances and a disturbing echo of other events. In his recent study of the emergence of democracy in Western Europe, the political scientist Daniel Ziblatt zeroes in on a decisive factor distinguishing the states that achieved democratic stability from those that fell prey to authoritarian impulses: The key variable was not the strength or character of the political left, or of the forces pushing for greater democratization, so much as the viability of the center-right. A strong center-right party could wall off more extreme right-wing movements, shutting out the radicals who attacked the political system itself.
Dancing at the edge of Both-Sides:
The left is by no means immune to authoritarian impulses; some of the worst excesses of the 20th century were carried out by totalitarian left-wing regimes. But right-wing parties are typically composed of people who have enjoyed power and status within a society. They might include disproportionate numbers of leaders—business magnates, military officers, judges, governors—upon whose loyalty and support the government depends. If groups that traditionally have enjoyed privileged positions see a future for themselves in a more democratic society, Ziblatt finds, they will accede to it. But if “conservative forces believe that electoral politics will permanently exclude them from government, they are more likely to reject democracy outright.”
I contend there's no such thing as a "left-wing totalitarian" - lefties really don't do that. If it's a totalitarian regime, then it's only pretending to be "lefty". Stalin was not a Communist - he called himself that as a disguise. He walked and talked and acted like a Tsarist, and that's what he was.
Ziblatt points to Germany in the 1930s, the most catastrophic collapse of a democracy in the 20th century, as evidence that the fate of democracy lies in the hands of conservatives. Where the center-right flourishes, it can defend the interests of its adherents, starving more radical movements of support. In Germany, where center-right parties faltered, “not their strength, but rather their weakness” became the driving force behind democracy’s collapse.
Of course, the most catastrophic collapse of a democracy in the 19th century took place right here in the United States, sparked by the anxieties of white voters who feared the decline of their own power within a diversifying nation.
Here's where the author's hypothesis is both bolstered, and starts to fail.
For a populist, Trump is remarkably unpopular. But no one should take comfort from that fact. The more he radicalizes his opponents against his agenda, the more he gives his own supporters to fear. The excesses of the left bind his supporters more tightly to him, even as the excesses of the right make it harder for the Republican Party to command majority support, validating the fear that the party is passing into eclipse, in a vicious cycle.
No goddammit - "the excesses of the left" ARE NOT THE SAME AS THOSE COMING FROM THE RIGHT.
Adam Przeworski, a political scientist who has studied struggling democracies in Eastern Europe and Latin America, has argued that to survive, democratic institutions “must give all the relevant political forces a chance to win from time to time in the competition of interests and values.” But, he adds, they also have to do something else, of equal importance: “They must make even losing under democracy more attractive than a future under non-democratic outcomes.” That conservatives—despite currently holding the White House, the Senate, and many state governments—are losing faith in their ability to win elections in the future bodes ill for the smooth functioning of American democracy. That they believe these electoral losses would lead to their destruction is even more worrying.
We should be careful about overstating the dangers. It is not 1860 again in the United States—it is not even 1850. But numerous examples from American history—most notably the antebellum South—offer a cautionary tale about how quickly a robust democracy can weaken when a large section of the population becomes convinced that it cannot continue to win elections, and also that it cannot afford to lose them.
the collapse of the mainstream Republican Party in the face of Trumpism is at once a product of highly particular circumstances and a disturbing echo of other events. In his recent study of the emergence of democracy in Western Europe, the political scientist Daniel Ziblatt zeroes in on a decisive factor distinguishing the states that achieved democratic stability from those that fell prey to authoritarian impulses: The key variable was not the strength or character of the political left, or of the forces pushing for greater democratization, so much as the viability of the center-right. A strong center-right party could wall off more extreme right-wing movements, shutting out the radicals who attacked the political system itself.
Dancing at the edge of Both-Sides:
The left is by no means immune to authoritarian impulses; some of the worst excesses of the 20th century were carried out by totalitarian left-wing regimes. But right-wing parties are typically composed of people who have enjoyed power and status within a society. They might include disproportionate numbers of leaders—business magnates, military officers, judges, governors—upon whose loyalty and support the government depends. If groups that traditionally have enjoyed privileged positions see a future for themselves in a more democratic society, Ziblatt finds, they will accede to it. But if “conservative forces believe that electoral politics will permanently exclude them from government, they are more likely to reject democracy outright.”
I contend there's no such thing as a "left-wing totalitarian" - lefties really don't do that. If it's a totalitarian regime, then it's only pretending to be "lefty". Stalin was not a Communist - he called himself that as a disguise. He walked and talked and acted like a Tsarist, and that's what he was.
Yes, "the left" generally insists on consistency regarding people's rights and some kind of doctrine of fairness, but centralized consolidated government power is a principle - indeed, the main tenet and overarching goal - of Plutocratic Daddy State Wingnuts (like Stalin, and Putin, and Erdogan, and Trump).
Ziblatt points to Germany in the 1930s, the most catastrophic collapse of a democracy in the 20th century, as evidence that the fate of democracy lies in the hands of conservatives. Where the center-right flourishes, it can defend the interests of its adherents, starving more radical movements of support. In Germany, where center-right parties faltered, “not their strength, but rather their weakness” became the driving force behind democracy’s collapse.
Of course, the most catastrophic collapse of a democracy in the 19th century took place right here in the United States, sparked by the anxieties of white voters who feared the decline of their own power within a diversifying nation.
It always backfires for the majority (or at least for a plurality), but it gets pushed through by the minority if their propaganda works, and if their voter suppression efforts are sufficient.
And remember, it really only takes a few hundred thousand votes nationwide. Trump "won" in 2016 by less than 200,000 votes, micro-targeted in a few dozen precincts.
The GOP’s efforts to cling to power by coercion instead of persuasion have illuminated the perils of defining a political party in a pluralistic democracy around a common heritage, rather than around values or ideals. Consider Trump’s push to slow the pace of immigration, which has backfired spectacularly, turning public opinion against his restrictionist stance. Before Trump announced his presidential bid, in 2015, less than a quarter of Americans thought legal immigration should be increased; today, more than a third feel that way. Whatever the merits of Trump’s particular immigration proposals, he has made them less likely to be enacted.
For a populist, Trump is remarkably unpopular. But no one should take comfort from that fact. The more he radicalizes his opponents against his agenda, the more he gives his own supporters to fear. The excesses of the left bind his supporters more tightly to him, even as the excesses of the right make it harder for the Republican Party to command majority support, validating the fear that the party is passing into eclipse, in a vicious cycle.
For the most part, the guy gets it right - it may seem like a Both Sides thing, but what we're looking at is a problem growing mostly - if not exclusively - from the right.
Nov 16, 2019
Relax
Here's a weird little thing that might be of use for us to stare at and find some small measure of calm in this tempest of political stress.
Every dot is traveling in a straight line.
Every dot is traveling in a straight line.
Today's Tweet
Eternal sadness.
School shootings from 2009 to 2018:— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) November 15, 2019
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Nov 14, 2019
An Outcome
Lots of manufactured hand-wringing and concern trolling over the effects impeachment can have on electoral politics.
Let's take a quick look at what's happened before, when Republicans have gone to great lengths trying to defend and rationalize the actions of a POTUS impeached for High Crimes & Misdemeanors.
Let's take a quick look at what's happened before, when Republicans have gone to great lengths trying to defend and rationalize the actions of a POTUS impeached for High Crimes & Misdemeanors.
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