Category: Uncategorized

Truth Isn’t Truth

It was the “moment” of Sunday’s political interviews.  Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York and present attorney for President Trump, responded to questioning by NBC’s Chuck Todd on Meet the Press about Prosecutor Mueller interviewing the President.  Todd said,  “truth is true.”  Giuliani retorted, “Truth isn’t truth.”

{click here to see the interview}

Todd stopped, credulous, and asked Giuliani if he meant that.  The Mayor went on to try to explain that he meant that Mueller’s truth in an interview with the President might not be the President’s truth, and therefore Mueller would charge the President with perjury.

Later on Meet the Press, I listened to conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt summarize an earlier interview with former CIA Director John Brennan.  Hewitt stated that Brennan had “…taken conspiracy off the table…” in regards to President Trump.  I listened to the Brennan interview myself, and heard Brennan specifically say that while the President had committed “…collusion in plain sight,” Brennan was waiting for the Mueller investigation results to see if there was a conspiracy, creating criminal liability.  There was nothing said about conspiracy charges being, “off the table.”

In ten minutes, Meet the Press summarized the pivotal problem of our politics and our government today.  We hear what we want to hear, we determine “truth,” not on some objective standard of validity, but on what we choose to believe ought to be true.  We have made “truth” into some squishy concept no longer black and white, but varying shades of gray.

It has always been a tenet of modern propaganda:  if you can control “the truth,” you can control what people believe and what they do. From the reality of Nazi Germany to the fiction of Orwell’s 1984, the control of what is considered “truth” is critical to authoritarian government.

And “truth” has always been “flexible” is some situations.  In 2009, the Republicans believed in the “truth” that the government had to step into to support the economy to avoid a massive Depression. While that was “truth” then, by 2012 they blamed Democrats for the national debt growing by trillions of dollars because of it.  And Republicans have always argued their “truth” that universal health care would lower health standards for the majority of Americans.

There is a difference between ideological views and truth, and there is a difference between truth and blame.

There is a “truth;” a factually valid item.  Either the President knew about his campaign’s collusion with the Russians, or he didn’t.  Either he fired FBI Director Comey because of Russia (as he said in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt) or he didn’t.  Either he asked Comey to take it easy on former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, or he didn’t.

These aren’t “squishy” concepts.

This is why the Mueller report, when it comes out, will begin to determine “truth.”  And this is also why it is the task of the President’s men, like Giuliani, to destroy the credibility of Mueller’s conclusions before we even get to see them.  The Trump Team’s goal:  pre-determine the “truth” and the “un-truth” of Mueller to control the outcomes.

There is room for questions: does the President have the ultimate right to fire any member of the executive branch, or did the campaign’s interaction with the Russia somehow not reach the threshold of illegality or is the Special Counsel law itself Constitutional?  These are questions of legal interpretation, not of fact or truth.

As hard as the President and his men, try to change the subject (why aren’t they investigating Hillary) or try to discount the outcomes (seventeen angry Democrats on the Mueller team) or try to make the “truth not the truth”:  we will have facts, the truth, to make a determination of what should occur.  There will be a Mueller report, and an opportunity to see reality.

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free –

 but Trump’s team is afraid the truth will take their freedom”

– John Meacham, American Historian

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Polarized

Slavery was the “…serpent under the table” at the US Constitutional convention.  It awakened as the critical issue during the decades long lead-up to the American Civil War.  Legislators over the first half of the 19^th century reached a series of compromises that pushed the crisis down the road, but, as mid-century was passed, there was little room for compromise left.

The last “Great Compromise” in 1850 tried to divide the new territories acquired in the Mexican-American War into slave and free areas.  California entered the union as a free state, Texas as a slave state, and the territories of New Mexico and Utah were granted the right to decide by vote, popular sovereignty.  This maintained the precarious balance of slave and free in the Congress.

But to “sweeten” the deal for the slave states, the Compromise also included the Fugitive Slave Act.  This law required that runaway slaves that made their way to free states must be returned to their masters in the South.  Federal marshals and other officials who did not fulfill that duty were subject to fines.

The Act was anathema to the abolitionists in the north.   There were dramatic protests and legal arguments, and folks jailed for refusing to obey the law.  It was the “wedge” the drove anti-slave and slave farther apart, with the South demanding the law be enforced, and the North outraged at the forced immorality it required.

By the late 1850’s the split was further exacerbated by the Supreme Court, who in the Dred Scott Decision, ruled that slaves had no standing in court to sue.  If slaves (or former slaves) could not go to the Court to enforce freedom, then ultimately it would be impossible for “free” states to remain free.

And popular sovereignty, allowing territories to determine their own status of slavery, turned out to be a recipe for violence.  The Kansas Territory ended up in a state of civil war, as both sides violently fought for their cause.  It was a rehearsal for the national battles soon to come.

By 1860 there was little middle ground left.  The Presidential candidate of the center, Democrat Stephen Douglas, received few electoral votes.  The results for the candidate of the North, Lincoln, and the one of the South, Breckenridge, showed the divided nation.  War was only a few months away.

The middle ground is slipping away today as well.  The “Republican Party” of Lincoln and even George Bush has been co-opted by President Trump.  The remaining old-school Republicans have found voice only in retirement, with Bob Corker of Tennessee, Jeff Flake of Arizona and John Kasich of Ohio the best examples. The traditional views and values of the Republican Party have been left behind.

The Democratic Party is only marginally better.  The current split between “left” and “lefter:” Progressives versus near-Socialists, has left the traditional centrist Democrats with no where to go.   There is little room in either party for a supporter of individual rights and fiscal responsibility, the traditional stand of the “Blue Dog” Democrat or “Rockefeller” Republican.

And our current means of communicating, with a choice of tailored news outlets that give the news that fits your views, serves to drive the wedge in deeper.   Seldom is heard the “other side,” and if so, then critical commentary quickly follows.  The power of the “tweet,” so effectively used by Trump, has narrowed our political discussion to 240 characters, and obliterated the value of the truth in our discussions.

The United States, created in compromise at the writing of the Constitution, is finding itself unable to reach a middle ground.  Those who try to reach agreement in the political sphere, now find themselves struggling to survive primary elections where extremism is the winning strategy. This is not just an ideological issue, it has become part of our structure with the gerrymandering of political districts that reward that extremism.

Are we on the verge of some kind of modern-day Civil War?  Whether President Trump is stopped and potentially removed, or his term is fought out in elections and tweets, is there some point where one side or the other will find the political arena unsatisfactory, and move to other, more dangerous venues? Are we so polarized that there is no path to the center?

The potential is there:  a Congress that is unwilling to act, a Supreme Court soon to be dominated by a marginal, far-right view promulgated by the Federalist Society, and a President who is demonstrating a willingness to embrace authoritarianism.  We are quickly moving to a political scene where there is no room for the center.  And when there is no compromise, then one side or the other will seek some other way to redress their grievances.

But there is still hope to avoid an existential crisis.  An election in November could start to fill in the center (though it could also further divide.)  There are still courageous leaders, willing to stand up for what they believe regardless of the consequences.  Non-political voices like John Brennan and Admiral William McRaven, and the remaining moderates in both parties are still there, though muted.

There are a large majority of Americans who still fall in the political middle.  They need representation as well, and those representatives could serve as the balance to the extremes of both sides.  We can hope that America, founded in compromise, might find its center again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Plot to End the Investigation

President Trump stripped former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance on Tuesday.  While Trump’s original statement claimed it was due to Brennan’s “erratic” statements in the media, in a Wall Street Journal interview he added a more insidious rationale:  that Brennan was one of those who began the Russia investigation.

The President also presented a list of those being considered for “stripping.”  They all were involved in the Russia investigation in one way or another.    Former CIA Director Mike Haden, former DNI James Clapper, and former FBI Director James Comey, along with Brennan, were at the January 2017 meeting informing then President-elect Trump of Russian interference.  Comey famously stayed after the meeting to tell Trump about the Steele Dossier’s most salacious sections.

When Trump then spoke out, stating that there wasn’t proof of Russian involvement, these four stood together behind their findings that the Russians did interfere. While the others left with the end of the Obama Administration, Comey was later fired by the President “…to end the Russia thing.”

Some others listed are former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strozk, and former Justice Department lawyer Lisa Page.  They were all involved in the beginnings of the Russia investigation.  Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice were Obama appointees that Trump has picked out for special attention; Rice because of her role in the Carter Page investigation, and Yates for warning the White House about Mike Flynn’s compromised position.

All of these individuals are no longer in government service (all but Rice and Page were fired.) Taking away their security clearances doesn’t change what they are doing now.  What it does do is take away the government’s ability to use their memory and experience with current problems:  if they don’t have clearances, they can’t be approached for information.

It also denies them the ability to look at their own files to refresh their memories.  When called to testify to Congress or in Court, they can’t confirm their testimony with “the record.”   This might create a potential perjury situation, but more likely makes it easier for the White House and their apologists, who can review the record, to contest their statements.

And, perhaps more ominously, the President is threatening the clearance of Bruce Ohr, currently in the FBI. If Ohr loses his clearance, he will no longer be able to do his job.  Trump would be effectively firing Ohr, without any “due process,” because he was a friend of Christopher Steele and vouched for his credentials.

Some commentators see the Brennan attack as the beginning of a slow-motion “Saturday Night Massacre,” effectively ending the investigators ability to investigate the Russian involvement. And while Nixon’s “massacre” drew Congressional rebuke, and resulted in a new Special Counsel with even greater authority, this slow motion attack has not drawn the same kind of criticism.   In fact, moderate Republicans like Senator Richard Burr  head of the Senate Intelligence Committee,  and Lindsey Graham, have recognized that this is within the President’s authority.

So far, outside of the media and Democrats, the only voices being raised against Trump are former leaders of the intelligence agencies themselves.  Former commander of Special Operations, Admiral William McRaven, specifically asked Trump to strip his clearance so he could stand with Brennan, while a dozen former intelligence officials, including Leon Panetta, Robert Gates and David Patraeus, publicly support Brennan.

So who’s next?  If this is Trump’s retribution for the Russia investigation, will the clearances of Robert Mueller or other members of the Special Counsel’s office turn up on the list?  Will the President reach down into the CIA to find those who brought the Russia information?  Is this a “kill the messenger” situation, or a larger attempt to actually kill the message?

Clearly this is the ultimate attempt to coerce potential witnesses against him, and obstruct justice. The President has been given the legal advice that he has these powers, and therefore has the authority to do this. The “unitary executive” principle his advisors espouse states that since the President is the ultimate authority in the executive branch, anything he does is legal and within his authority.

We will see if this theory holds up.  It didn’t work for Richard Nixon, who ultimately was rebuked by the Supreme Court, and finally by the Congress for obstructing justice.  And perhaps President Trump is enjoying the “threat,” without actually intending to proceed.  It certainly has achieved one goal:  it has changed the subject again.

Mr. Mueller, do what you have to do.  But please, if you could hurry, that would be good too.

 

 

 

In the Fog

The Manafort trial went to the jury yesterday.  Over the next few days, jurors will be examining four hundred pieces of evidence and hundreds of hours of testimony.  Former Presidential aide Omarosa is being sued by the Trump Campaign for violating a non-disclousure agreement, and will probably release another recording to upset their apple cart.  The President is using his powers to attack “enemies,” notably former CIA Director John Brennan.

There is a “fog” of activity around the Trump Administration, generated by tweets and Giuliani and Huckabee-Sanders, that is covering the significant changes to our world they are making. Here’s what’s going on this week, underneath cover.

The Department of Interior modified the endangered species act, allowing for animals whose conditions have improved to be removed form protection.  The state of Wyoming’s Fish and Wildlife Commission will allow a “big game” grizzly hunt next month, killing as many as twenty-two bears.   It costs $15 for a hunting license, but $600 for a Wyoming resident and $6000 for a non-resident to get a tag to kill a bear.   Wolves, also removed from protection, are hunted in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

The Environmental Protection Agency is allowing industry to apply to use known carcinogen asbestos in newly developed products.  While previous administrations had followed a trend towards banning all uses of asbestos to reduce its cancer causing effects, the Trump EPA is allowing it. In addition, they have re-written the safety rules to state that previous cancer causing uses of asbestos, like asbestos insulations, cannot be used showing proof of future dangers.  The current safety studies must create whole new evidence.

The Education Department has put new guidelines into effect for educational institutions using Federal funds.  The changes to rules for Title IX alter how schools, in particularly colleges and universities, deal with sexual offenses.  Under President Obama, schools were required to investigate charges of sexual offenses, hold hearings on the results of the investigation, and follow a “preponderance of the evidence” standard in reaching conclusions (preponderance of the evidence means that of the evidence is given a percentage scale, the side with more than 50% of the evidence wins.)

Under the new “DeVos” rules, schools can now offer to “mediate” sexual offenses rather than treat them as student conduct offenses.  If the school does investigate, it now must use a “clear and convincing evidence” standard in reaching conclusions (clear and convincing is a higher standard, more of a 75% standard but still less than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of criminal law.)  Formerly both sides in an investigation could appeal the outcome, under the new rules now only the accused can appeal the outcome.

The overall effect of these changes will make it harder for sexual offense victims to get justice, and easier for offenders to “get away” with it, especially in “date rape, he-said/ she-said” situations.

Education Secretary DeVos has also cut $13 billion from the fund to help students repay loans used for “for profit” schools that ultimately were fraudulent.  This leaves thousands of students holding the bag for loans that were granted by the Federal government to use at schools that were giving worthless degrees.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) has been using the Citizenship and Immigration Services Agency (CIS) to trick illegal immigrants into coming to meetings where they are arrested.  The immigrants, following a government program that creates a path for them to become legal, come to scheduled meetings at CIS.  ICE officers then come to the meeting, and arrest the immigrants for deportation.

An ICE officer who helped schedule and implement these arrests stated: “…They are typically the easiest to remove, they have the shortest average length of stay, and at the end of the day we are in the removal business and it’s our job to locate and arrest them.”

The goal of the CIS program is for an illegal immigrant to be granted legal status and gain a “green card.”  In effect then, CIS is baiting those immigrants by offering a path to legality, then ICE is capturing and deporting them.

So as we focus on the sad circus that has become the Trump Administration, we shouldn’t miss the steady drumbeat of change in American government.  Whether we are baiting bears or immigrants, or leaving victims in our educational systems hanging, or risking further poisoning our citizens: the Trump Administration is constantly demonstrating coldness, cruelty, and a bias towards profit.  Under cover of the fog of the daily craziness, they are quietly changing our world.

Paybacks

Today, President Donald J Trump “pulled” former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance.  While he came up with a variety of excuses for doing so, this is really only about one thing:  Brennan called Trump’s behavior at Helsinki treasonous.  John Brennan, in his own well-developed opinion, felt Trump did not act in the best interest of the United States.  Today Trump told him – paybacks are a bitch (or a dog.)

Others, including NSA Director Mike Hayden, former DNI James Clapper and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, are also under consideration for losing their clearances. And, while James Comey and Andy McCabe are also mentioned, they have carefully pointed out that they lost their clearance when they were fired from the FBI.  I’m sure Peter Strozk’s name will be added to the list of those who should lose clearance, but already have lost them.

Retired intelligence officials are kept on clearances in order to help current officials. Intelligence issues cross the boundaries of political changes; sometimes it’s necessary to find out what was done before.  These former officials act as the institutional memory and can help add depth and understanding to current decisions.  They don’t get updated intelligence briefings, but occasionally are brought “up to speed” in order to give input on current operations.

This won’t stop Brennan, now working for NBC, or the others from stating their views and opinions. They don’t need a clearance to work in the media, and they don’t need the President’s permission to speak out. They cannot reveal “secrets,” they are still bound by the laws and regulations that protect national security, with or without a clearance, so having the clearance doesn’t effect their current employment.

What it does do is deprive our current national intelligence leaders of their experience.  In an Administration that is sorely lacking in that area, it seems reckless to deny access to more.   And it threatens the free speech rights of those named.

But, as it has been made clear again and again, the President’s main goal is to defend himself, not our country.  That Brennan would dare speak out, stating what a great many Americans were thinking as they watched the President humiliate himself to Russia’s leader, is unacceptable.  And since Brennan seems impervious to the President’s preferred method of attack, the dreaded “tweet,” Trump had to find some more dramatic way to try to disgrace him.

By the way, it also changes the subject from the Manafort trial, and the Omarosa tapes, and the election failures, and the looming Mueller investigation.  This action, among all of the others, shows we have a President who runs the nation like he was the 8^th grade class President.

The disgrace isn’t Brennan’s.

 

 

The Enemy of My Enemy

We are in August, or more exactly, the “silly season.”  We are waiting; waiting for the results of the Mueller investigation, waiting for the verdict of the Manafort trial, waiting for the November elections.  We are impatiently looking for some “action.” So we are drawn into the nonsense.

Just because someone is “the enemy of my enemy” does NOT make them your friend.  Let’s start with Omarosa.  She recorded Chief of Staff Kelly firing her, she recorded President Trump consoling her, and she probably has more recordings that will embarrass the White House.  “Resistors” will take pleasure in the squirming, but don’t forget that this is the same Omarosa who owes any fame she has to Trump, and who, with shining eyes, told us what a great President he would make.  She has only one interest, and it’s not necessarily the “good” of the country.

Next is the prospective candidate for the Democratic nomination for President, lawyer Michael Avenatti.  We have enjoyed watching him ride circles around the Trump and Cohen lawyers, and we have marveled as he revealed secret information to forward the Cohen investigation. He has proved his openness to society, standing shoulder to shoulder with porn star Stormy Daniels, demanding that she receive due process.  He is a “shooting star;” taking his legal advocacy onto the cable networks, going to the border to reunite families, and expanding his role as a leading “resistor” to the Trump Presidency.

But don’t mistake his legal adeptness and articulation as qualifications for President.  He demands that we find a candidate that can go toe-to-toe in our new “reality show” politics, and that he’s the one.  And while I agree that he is a true “reality show” hero, I don’t believe that makes for a qualified President of the United States. We are living with the results of one reality President, that experience should lead us to find a different set of qualifications, not just the opposite of the same thing.

Yesterday Peter Strozk was fired by the FBI.  Strozk is the flawed hero of the 2016 Presidential investigations; the one that opened the Trump campaign probe but kept that information from the press during the election cycle.  Strozk has been the leader of some of the most successful counter-espionage investigations of the last two decades, and he was a leader in the Clinton email search as well.  It is easy to make him another “martyr” to the Trump corruption, along with Comey, McCabe, and the rest.

But keep in mind, Strozk also was the highly trained agent who decided to have an affair using government owned phones.  He put thousands of texts, critical of all sorts of candidates for President but particularly Donald Trump, on devices owned and controlled by the US government. It was a stupid mistake, one made out of hubris, a disbelief that anyone would ever investigate the investigator.

Had he made them on a personal device, his argument that he was simply exercising his 1^st Amendment rights would carry a lot more weight.  As it is, he embarrassed himself, and his agency, and did serious damage to the search for the truth.  He inadvertently gave aid and comfort to those who want to discredit the entire investigation.  While we may argue about the technicalities of the FBI Professional Responsibility office recommendation of a lesser penalty, Strozk’s behavior certainly earned him getting fired.

So as we wait for the next “shoe to drop,” don’t fall into the trap.  The enemy of your enemy may be fun to watch, and may even further your cause, but she, or he, is NOT necessarily a friend, or a future President.

 

 

Our American Crisis

Today I was watching “second to second” coverage of the anniversary of the Charlottesville race violence of last year.  Charlottesville has declared itself closed to demonstration and protests of any kind this year, so the white nationalists have determined that they will take their message to Washington, D.C.

They organized in Fairfax, Virginia, and drove by car with police escort to the Vienna Metro Station. Then they took a (single) reserved Metro car into DC. By the way, if you can fit a whole protest into a Metro car, then it probably isn’t much of a protest.  Hundreds, perhaps thousands of counter-protestors awaited them, as the white nationalists made their way from the “Foggy Bottom” Metro Station to Lafayette Park across from the White House.  The counter-protestors point is already made; the “anniversary protest” is now just a First Amendment exercise.

This is after a week where Americans have had some reason to question whether our leaders are racist or not. President Trump has called black men who criticized him, Don Lemmon of CNN and LeBron James of the LA Lakers, “stupid,” Maxine Waters a black woman who opposes him  as“low IQ,” and Omarosa, a black woman who was his former staffer a “lowlife.” The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency tried to “spirit away” Hispanic immigrants who were asking for amnesty in Federal Court (the judge ordered them returned to the US,) and a Fox News Commentator (Laura Ingraham) told us that the migrants have “taken away” the America we all “loved.”

So while we are still a nation dealing with a backlash to the momentous changes of the past twenty years, the paltry turnout of “hate” in Washington today may give us some measure of reassurance.

Last night I had the privilege, thanks to my brother-in-law, of watching the musical, Hamilton.  Lin-Manuel Miranda has written the striking saga of an immigrant, Alexander Hamilton, and his impact on our nation.  In song and rap, it covers the idealism of the American Revolution, and the terrible crises of American infancy.  Farmers versus City dwellers, North versus South, Slave versus Free, Strong Government versus Weak; the founders struggled with immense problems. And, while they all “took their shot,” it wasn’t clean, or agreeable.

When John Adams ran for his second term in office, Thomas Jefferson, the Vice President, ran against him. And while in those times it was considered “unacceptable” for a candidate for President to campaign, partisan newspapers took up the fight, not unlike today where we have differing “news outlets” supporting one side or the other.  And while the Democratic-Republicans called Adams, the author of the Alien and Sedition Acts, a tyrant who wanted to be King; the Federalists had a much more personal attack.  To the tune of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” a song was composed to “Montecellian Sally,” referring to Jefferson’s slave and paramour, Sally Hemings.

America has been through tremendous crises.  And while we haven’t seen the intellect and power of post-Revolutionary America (Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison et al) rise yet on our current crisis, you can already see the beginnings of the “American Exceptionalism” we have grown to expect. There will be those who “Rise Up” to lead our country forward.

And it isn’t just Democrats. While Republicans seem bound and gagged by the Trump base and tweet, there are still a few who lead forward, even some who have not already given up seeking office.  Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, is quietly leading the Senate Intelligence Committee to find real and honest results in their Russia investigation (yes, a distant relation to Aaron Burr, Hamilton’s protagonist.) John Kasich, Governor of Ohio continues to speak out against the abuses of the Trump Administration.

And as we watch Democrats begin the long, drawn-out process of jockeying for the 2020 Presidential nomination, there are those doing the hard intellectual work of finding the truth, without making too much political capital from it.  Congressman Adam Schiff of California, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, and Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York are pressing for fairness and truthfulness, and in January, may well be leading us through this Presidential crisis.

There are always those who will refuse to accept an outcome.  Aaron Burr, the Vice President of the United States who shot and killed Hamilton in a duel, went out West to become involved in a plot to create a separate nation. In our present circumstances, there will be those on both sides who will refuse a “political” solution.  To the right, they will threaten to “exercise their 2^ndAmendment Rights.”  To the left, they will demand an overthrow of all of the Republicans, regardless of the Mueller results.

We have been there before. This is not our first American Crisis. And while we may not be as “…young, scrappy and hungry…” as we once were; we will still find the leadership to find our path through.

The Mirror

Israel is a nation whose foundations are shaking.  Barely the size of New Jersey, it is surrounded by nations hostile to its existence. It was founded as the homeland for Jews, and, after the Holocaust and World War II, was given the “blessing” of the United Nations to exist in 1948.

It has been seventy years since the establishment of the state of Israel.  There have been five wars with the surrounding neighbors, and a history of terrorism, rocket attacks, and unrest.  In 1967 Israel expanded its territory and took over strategic refugee areas just beyond its border.  Israel now has a total population of 8.5 million, with 1.6 million Palestinians living within the “old” borders. There are an additional five million Palestinians who live in the areas occupied in 1967.

Israel is a democracy based in religion.  Judaism is given preference in the laws of the nation, and while a majority of Jews in Israel are “non-practicing,” the conservative religious parties have a strong say in what laws are made.  They are proud of their Jewish heritage and want their country to remain a Jewish homeland.

But a democracy means that citizens have the right to vote and alter laws.  With over 20% of their nation non-Jewish even without the occupied territories, the pressure is growing on Israel to address the concerns of all their citizens.  Theocracy or Democracy is a growing question.

The current government of Israel is addressing the problem by building walls.  While the occupied territories are still under Israeli control, they have their own elected governments.  So Israel has walled them off, both the West Bank and Gaza.  The Walls keep the Palestinians contained, and Israelis strictly control access into their country.  Since most employment in the region is in Israeli territory, unemployment in the West Bank and Gaza is over 30%.  These living conditions create a constant cause of protest and demonstration, leading to violence at the border crossings, particularly in the Gaza region.

If all of this sounds vaguely familiar to current Americans, it should.  The Trump Administration has close ties to the Netanyahu government in Israel.  Many of the tactics chosen by Netanyahu:  building walls, restricting borders, meeting immigrants with legal resistance; all are similar to tactics the Trump Administration are using.  Trump advisors have spoken of their great admiration for what Israel is willing to do, and have failed to speak out when hundreds were killed in violence at the Gaza border.

To the Trump Administration and its supporters, the problems of Israel are similar to the problems of the United States.  They fear the “browning” of America, looking to projections that show that by 2045, whites in the US will no longer by the majority race.  And like Israel, Trump demands that we build “the Wall” to protect us from the peoples to our South, “brown people.”  They are not only trying to stop illegal immigration, but also cut back on legal immigration and even going so far as to revoke the earned US citizenship of immigrants.

Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham made this statement last week:

“The America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like … this is related to both illegal and legal immigration.”

Her racism is more than apparent, and her view is shared by many of the Trump Administration.  This is the same “Breitbart” fueled fear that has driven the far right movements in the US for twenty years.  Now they are in control of the reins of power, and they are trying to “foist” their white vision of America on all of us.

They are taking the Israeli model and trying to apply it the American problems.  The problem is that it isn’t even working for Israel.  While the walls and violence has separated Israelis from Palestinians, it has also place Israel in a constant state of war, costing them over 5% of the Gross Domestic Product annually (US spends 3.5%.)  And it hasn’t stopped violence, rocket attacks, and terrorist bombings.

There are alternative strategies for both the US and Israel.  There are more humane ways of resolving problems beyond just walling them off.  And for both, change in the future is inevitable, no matter how high a wall they build.   The inhumanity of their current tactics are obvious.  Both nations should look in the mirror and see what their current strategies are doing, before they lose their souls.

 

 

 

 

 

By Their Oath

Republican Congressman Devin Nunes of California, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee; gave a fundraising speech last week.  In the grand tradition of Mitt Romney and the 49% speech, there was an undercover reporter with an IPhone, getting all of what Nunes had to say between the clink of glasses and clank of silverware on plates.

The essence of Nunes’ message:  that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives was the only thing standing between President Trump and impeachment.  Nunes made it clear that since Attorney General Sessions won’t “un-recuse” himself and fire Mueller; that the House should take up the impeachment of Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein once again.   Their goal:  get rid of Rosenstein and replace him with a more amenable Deputy who would get rid of the “meddlesome” Special Counsel.

And with an insider’s nod, he explained that they couldn’t impeach yet, because the Senate was busy with the Brett Kavanaugh nomination.  He wouldn’t want to interfere with that.  But after Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court, and after the mid-term elections, it would be time to impeach Rosenstein so Mueller could be fired.  There would be plenty of legislative space from November until the House adjourned in December, regardless of the results of the popular vote.

The “secret tape” was revealed with all of the drama of “Geraldo and the safe” on the Rachel Maddow show.  What did it show?   Nunes thinks exactly what we thought he thinks, and that he is stupid enough to say it in a setting where it became public.  It made for outrage in the “Resistance,” but no surprises.

But it did openly reveal what has been apparent for a while.  Republicans are pretty sure that Trump did something illegal.  They are planning on Mueller coming out with criminal offenses that would place anyone other than the President under indictment. And, they believe that Mueller probably won’t indict the President, but place all of the evidence against him in front of the House and the public.

Republicans are laying the groundwork for the defense against those charges.  Rudy Giuliani has been making their strategy clear through his incoherent ramblings:  the “seventeen angry Democrats” on the Mueller team, the constant refrain of the illegitimacy of the investigation, claiming that it was based on the Steele Dossier, and now a deadline.  A nation that clearly saw the impact of the Comey letter on the national election in October of 2016, is now being told that if Mueller doesn’t “wrap up” his investigation by September 1^st, then he is illegitimately trying to influence the Congressional election.  It is the “phantom” Department of Justice sixty-day rule.

What does all of this “smoke” imply?  Republicans are preparing to lose control of the House of Representatives.  They clearly believe that a Democrat controlled House will begin investigations, followed by impeachment hearings and actual impeachment of the President.  It only takes a simple majority of the House to bring charges against the President, and if Democrats have it, they will use it.

There is little Republicans in the House will be able to do at that point, other than to try to “muddy the waters.”  But what Republicans, in the House, and working for the White House, can do is to build a case for the President in the Senate.   The Senate would decide the fate of an impeached Donald Trump, with sixty-seven votes required to remove the President.  This means, regardless of the election outcome in November, it will require sixteen or seventeen Republican Senators to vote for removal.

This entire campaign of disinformation about the Mueller investigation isn’t really aimed at the House, or the public.  It is ultimately aimed at those few Republican Senators who might ultimately be persuaded by charges against the President.  It gives them an “out” to stand for the President, to claim that the entire investigation is illegitimate.

The oath each Senator (and all government officials) pledges upon entering office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

We are on a long road towards impeachment.  Republicans, who, according to Nunes, have seen it as their duty to undercut the investigation at every turn, will try to stall as long as possible.  The question of whether the President will be questioned by the Mueller team, which has dragged on for over a year, is just another way they have strategically slowed the pace of the investigations.  There will be more roadblocks.

And the Mueller Team remains silently doing their work. We don’t know what they know, or what they have.  We do now that they will ultimately place their evidence before the nation.  And then we will ask our Senators to live up to that oath of office, rather than their political allegiances.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glass Half Full

The Democrat came within a couple of thousand votes of winning Ohio’s 12^thCongressional District last night.  In an August special election to replace long time Republican Congressman Pat Tiberi, Democrat Danny O’Connor was within a percent of Republican Troy Balderson.  There’s provisional ballots to count, and a potential recount, but in all likelihood Balderson will gain the seat, at least until November, when the two face off again.

The 12^thhas been a traditional Republican district for decades, the last Democrat to win was in 1980.  And with re-districting in 2011, the 12^thwas even more “Republicanized.”  It contains rural counties:  Morrow, Muskingum, and parts of Richland and Marion. These are traditional farm and Republican strongholds, but while there’s a lot of geography, that’s not where the votes are.

The 12^thalso has the northern Columbus suburbs in Franklin County.  It’s hard to imagine that upscale residential suburbs of Worthington, Dublin and Westerville (as well as the northern residential areas within the city of Columbus) are now considered “Democrat;” but O’Connor’s 65% vote margin shows it’s true.

So it’s the balance, between the rural and the urban/suburban.  And in between those two extremes are the “exurbs,” the tremendous residential neighborhoods that have grown beyond the Columbus outer-belt in the past forty years.   Southern Delaware County and Western Licking County make up those areas, and hold the current balance in electoral outcomes.

Delaware County, where President Trump came for a pep rally last Saturday, ran close to it’s 55% Trump vote in 2016, with Baldeson getting almost 54%.  But the upscale areas nearer Columbus ran more Democratic, raising the question of Trump’s impact on white suburban women, the “soccer moms.”  If O’Connor made a dent in the Republican wall, it was there.

Where he didn’t have an impact was in Western Licking County, my home.  Like clockwork, Licking County gave the Republican 60% of the vote, the same numbers that the area has produced for decades.  The difference is that it is now much more populous, feeling the increasing Columbus growth pivoting to the east, and is another Republican bastion.

Things may be different in November in the 12^th, when there is an election with more than one race on the ballot.  A hotly contested gubernatorial race will head the ticket (Democrat Rich Cordray versus Republican Mike DeWine) and long serving Senator Sherrod Brown is up for re-election.  Traditional wisdom would say that a November election would mean a greater turnout for Democrats; it wouldn’t take much to tip the scale for O’Connor.

But it will also take greater outreach to the outer suburbs, not necessarily to win Licking and Delaware counties, but to mitigate the losses.

That’s the “micro” version of this election.  The “macro” version is more encouraging:  in a Congressional District that voted 11% for Trump in 2016, that Pat Tiberi won by 66% in the same year, and has had a Republican Congressman for thirty-five years:  a Democrat came within 1700 votes (out of 200,000) of crossing the finish line.  If this district is “in play,” then the Republican Congress should put their “blue wave” life jackets on.

They’re going to drown.

 

 

 

 

Patriots and Victims

I became politically “aware” in the late 1960’s.  I grew up in the heat of the civil rights and anti-war movements; both were part of my day-to-day world.  It was a time of turmoil:  a time when Americans were at odds with each other, and with their views of what America was.

One of the bumper sticker slogans I remember from that time was, “AMERICA – LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT.”  It meant that if you wanted to change America, by ending the Vietnam War, or by fighting for full civil rights for minorities, then somehow you didn’t love America, and you should get out.  It meant that questioning authority was somehow un-American, that wanting to make America “better” in your own view wasn’t acceptable for an American citizen.

So here we are, fifty years later.  We are perhaps as divided now as we were then, though it seems to me that things were terribly divided then too.  And I hear the same sentiment now that I remember from those days.

There is a Facebook “meme” going around – it’s a picture of an American Flag flying from the front porch of a house.  It demands that if you’d fly the flag, you should share the “meme.”  It originates from a group that favors President Trump, and it implies that those that support him support the flag – and those that don’t are against it.

President Trump has tried to forward this claim, literally wrapping himself in “the flag” on issue after issue.  He has convinced a large group of Americans that their fellow citizens who use flag ceremonies as an opportunity to express their grievances about America are un-American. If you are against Trump, you must be against the flag. That is the farthest from the truth.

There is nothing more American than protest.  There is nothing more American than voicing your views, and trying to change America for what you believe is the better.  America began in protest and revolution.  How can the descendants, actual or political, of Washington and Jefferson, and Sam Adams, Thomas Paine and Crispus Attucks; somehow claim that protest is un-American.  It is how we began.  It is in the DNA of our nation.

On the other side, there is a terrible condescension in the anti-Trump, Resistance movement.  It is summed up with one term:  deplorables.  With that one term, we dismiss the concerns of our fellow Americans, we mark them as ignorant, irredeemable, and backward.  That is just as wrong as “…LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT.”  It denies their legitimate grievances; that the America they thought they knew has changed so radically that they are left out of the American dream.  They aren’t wrong, the pace of change in the past twenty years has been dramatic; it is no wonder some feel pushed to the side.

And there are Americans who are so frustrated that they look to easy answers to explain what has occurred. Conspiracies and theories; stories of dreaded cabals of varying kinds that have “taken” our country have found fertile ground in the turmoil of our times.  The changes have happened so fast, and been so dramatic; that it is easy to think there must be some dark and shady forces with purpose behind them.

And the crisis hasn’t yet been reached.  We, Americans, have a “fiery trial” still to go through; it will be years before we can put this time in our lives into the past, before reconciliation.   But even in the passion and heat of the coming crisis, we, Americans, need to recognize that no one side of the argument has a full monopoly on what is right; or what is American.

There’s a flag flying from my front porch.  It’s been there for years.  It symbolizes the nation we can be, even if that is not the nation we are.  James Madison said it best:  “…a more perfect Union…” We are still “perfecting” our Union; two-hundred and thirty-one years after he wrote those words.  No matter where you stand on the issues of our time, fly the flag:  it represents the nation YOU want to perfect.  That’s as American as it gets.

 

 

 

 

Ohio’s 12^th

Tomorrow is election day, here in Ohio’s 12^th Congressional District.  Pat Tiberi, who represented the District from 2001 until this winter, chose to do what many “mainstream” Republican politicians found to be their best choice in the Trump era:  he resigned from the House and went to make money in the private sector.

While the 12^th District was redesigned after the 2010 census, it has always been Republican. The 2010 redistricting, the result of a Republican computer driven gerrymander, made it an even more Republican seat.

Today’s 12^th District goes from Mansfield in the north, down I-71 sixty miles to include a sliver of the city of Columbus (for those who know the city, it’s the east side of High Street from OSU, then both sides of High Street to Worthington.) Then it includes the northern suburbs of Columbus including Dublin, Powell, Lewis Center, and Delaware County.

The district then goes east over sixty miles, splitting the suburb of Gahanna, includes all of Licking County, and into the rural eastern part of Ohio, with parts of Muskingum and Perry County.  The gerrymander diluted the Democratic areas of Columbus and the smaller urban areas of Newark and Zanesville, with the massively suburban northern Columbus area, and the rural areas of the east.

For many years this was not a contested election.  The Democrats would usually put a body on the ballot (and I would vote for them) but the reality was that Pat Tiberi, and before him John Kasich, were the overwhelming favorites.  Tiberi won with over 66% of the vote in 2016; President Trump won by 11% over Clinton.

That’s not the case tomorrow.  Tomorrow Republican Troy Balderson, a state representative from the Delaware area, is facing stiff opposition from Democrat Danny O’Connor, the current Auditor in Franklin County (Columbus and Central Ohio.)  Current polling shows Balderson ahead, 46% to 45%.

Whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s vote, the Republican party has already gotten the message. They can no longer assume that the suburban vote is automatically “theirs.” With Trump’s numbers upside down with women, the “soccer mom” vote of suburban Worthington,  Dublin, Olentangy and New Albany is up for grabs.  And frankly, Trump’s rally on Saturday and Pence’s visit last Monday probably didn’t help.

The key to a Democratic victory tomorrow is turnout.  The usual gripe:  Democrats don’t show up for mid-term elections.  Ohio looks like a “Red” state at first glance:  only one Democrat holds statewide office, and both houses of the state legislature have large Republican majorities.  But the results of the past several Presidential elections show that with a full Democratic turnout, Ohio can be, at the least, “purple.”

The higher the visibility of the race, the more likely Democrats will be motivated to go to the polls. What would normally be a “reflex” Republican district, now has the accelerant of a Presidential and Vice Presidential visit to drive Democrats out to vote.  Republican Governor Kasich, who endorsed Balderson, suggests that the candidate didn’t want the President to come in for that reason.  That didn’t stop the “Wrestlemania- like” Trump rally from coming to town, to  Olentangy’s Orange High School, right in the heart of upper-middle class suburban Columbus.

This election is only for four months.  No matter the results tomorrow, there will be a re-run in November, when the same two candidates will face off again.  But with the focus of the nation, and both political parties, squarely on Ohio now, the money has flowed.  The usual negative ads have been on television, with O’Connor claiming Balderson will raise the retirement age and cut social security, and Balderson claiming O’Connor is a Pelosi sycophant who will raise taxes and open the borders.

From inside the district, it really doesn’t feel like any of those claims have “stuck.”

Tomorrow then, ends up being a referendum on the President.  The election is taking place in a District that overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2016.  If Danny O’Connor wins, it would be a huge upset; if he loses within a couple of points, it still will send a message.  While the “Trump voter” may support Trump, that support doesn’t extend to Republican candidates in a general election.

Ohio’s 12^th District will tell that tale tomorrow, and give all of us a better idea of what will happen in November.  For those of us in the District, don’t forget to go out and vote (even if you may vote differently than I would.)  For the rest, we will know more on Wednesday.  Stay tuned.

 

 

Enemy of the People

The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it’s TRUE. I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People. They purposely cause great division & distrust. They can also cause War! They are very dangerous & sick!

Donald J Trump, President of the United States, 8/5/18

They are “…sick, dangerous, an enemy of the people.”  They are so dangerous that the President of the United States, using his “bully pulpit,” has made them the primary target of his attacks.  In our reality show political world, he has cast himself as the “hero” facing the massive attack of lies and hate.

Many Presidents have set up “alternative enemies” to their “good guy” images:  George W. Bush and the “axis of evil,” Ronald Reagan and the “evil empire.”  And every President has had conflicts with the press.  But, other than Richard Nixon, none have tried to establish the press as his personal enemy.  And even Nixon did not try to incite this level of hatred towards them.

President Trump has made his administration’s primary goal to attack the “MSM” (mainstream media), trying to make them seem the evil enemy threatening to destroy the United States. And, with one very notable exception, Fox News, he has claimed that the press is willing to lie, steal, create stories out of nothing, and in fact are willing to do anything to “destroy” the Trump Administration.

It is normal for a President to find domestic “rivals” to contrast his views and programs.  In Bill Clinton’s Democratic administration, the first two years with a Congress of his own party was deemed a failure, most notably with healthcare.  The Congress was more “progressive” than the President, and Republicans weren’t supporting him.  It made Clinton look weak.

It wasn’t until the “Revolution of 1994,” when Congress swung to the right with the Republican Newt Gingrich as the new Speaker, that Clinton began to find success.  It was in contrasting with the Gingrich’s House of Representatives that Clinton was seen as becoming a more effective executive. The government was shut down, and Clinton “won” the exchange.  He was able to “compromise” and achieve some legislative action.

Trump is in a similar position, starting from when he entered office in 2016.  His Republican Congress provided little contrast, but an immense amount of frustration.  Trump was the “leader” of the party, but, even as the “great deal maker” he was unable to negotiate many of his legislative programs, notably immigration and health care.  He needed to find a contrast, “bête noire” to rail against, and one that wasn’t a war hero and tragically ill.

The “liberal, corrupt, and dishonest” media became the perfect foil.  Jim Acosta and Don Lemmon of CNN are constant targets of the Presidential “tweets,” and Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski at MSNBC are “personal friends” who have “turned against him.”  The “failing New York Times” and the “Amazon/Bezo’s Washington Post” are both under constant attack.

This use of the media as his foil has two major values for Trump.   First: it gives his base something to focus on, an enemy that can be vilified and insulted.  While that is apparent at more recent Trump rallies, with signs, middle-finger salutes, and shouted profanities; it has been going on almost from the beginning.  The only slightly veiled contempt that Press Secretary Sarah Sanders uses when addressing the press conferences; and the unbridled hatred shown by senior advisor Stephen Miller; all set the tone that encourages more public attacks.  Trump needs to be seen as “winning.”  It’s not happening:  not on the world stage, not in the courts, and even not in Congress. So he can win against the press.

As a long time coach I learned something early:  to have a winning record, schedule losing opponents.  But I also soon learned something else:  to get the best out of my athletes, I needed to test them against the best opponents.  We might lose, but we would become better.  Trump has picked an opponent, the press, that generally doesn’t fight back. He wins, but he doesn’t get better, or in this case, achieve a lot of his goals.

Should the Democrats take back the House, the Senate, or both; it is likely that Trump, like Clinton, will focus his attacks on the Democrats instead of the media.  It’s a healthier target, and one that he can more effectively defeat, getting “more wins.”

The second value of attacking the media is more insidious.  If the President can get a large portion of the American people believing that the “facts” as reported are lies, then when the truth of his campaigns corruption and alignment with Russian intelligence is revealed, it will be more difficult to believe.  If he can establish that the press is in fact, “…the enemy of the people;” then when the press reports the reality of the Mueller results, the President can brush them off as, well, “fake news.”

Twenty-five percent of Americans still approved of Richard Nixon the day he resigned from office. That was in an era when most trusted in the press.  In our much more fragmented news environment today, especially one with  Fox News as the Presidential spokesman; there will be a much higher percentage of Americans who will not believe in Mueller’s truths.  Whether that number will be so high as to prevent action against the President, it’s hard to know.  But what we do know is that the President is doing everything he can to bolster that group,  by making the press the “enemy of the people.”

“The American people have good common sense;” that’s what Chet Huntley said as he left the NBC Huntley-Brinkley report for the last time in 1970.  It was a time of crisis and tumult too, Vietnam and Civil Rights and Nixon as President.  We will need all of the “good common sense” we can muster in the next several months.  I believe America will find it.

 

 

 

The World Turned Upside Down

(thanks Hamilton, I’ll see you next week!!!!)

The American Revolutionary forces defeated the British at Yorktown, forcing them to surrender their entire army.  Shocked at being defeated by the “ragtag rebels;” they marched out of the town towards the American lines, their band playing “The World Turned Upside Down.”

Ever since Donald J. Trump came down the golden escalator in Trump Tower and declared his candidacy for President, he has engaged in hyperbole, propaganda, and outright lies. There have been so many “falsehoods” or “inaccuracies,” that the media stopped calling them lies and has created new categories, from inadvertent, to unwitting, to outright whoppers.  There are multiple news agencies keeping count (well into the three-thousands) and an entire website dedicated to cataloging those since he became President (well over two thousand) by the Toronto Star.

The master propagandist of history, Joseph Goebbels, said the following about “the big lie:”

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

There is always danger in quoting Goebbels, especially in our present political climate, but his eminently practical view of lying is absolutely on point.  A great example is the President’s view of MS-13, the gang he continually cites as a threat to America.  He uses MS-13 to justify the extreme expense of building “the wall,” and for his draconian measures at the Southern Border.

MS-13 is a gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, USA; mostly made up of El Salvadoran migrants.  The Clinton Administration rounded many of them up and sent them back to El Salvador, where the gang grew in power.  While most of the MS-13 members in the United States are here illegally, their numbers represent only 13% of gang arrests in the US.  And at the border, where the President claims that MS-13 is coming in under the guise of families, there were NO documented casesof that happening.

But it doesn’t matter.  Under the Goebbels theory:

• the lie is big and repeated
• the State is shielding us from the consequences (or reality) of the lie
• the Administration is using its power to repress dissent (and truth).

So, the great “boogie man” of immigration, MS-13, is out to “get us.” And anyone who disagrees with that thesis, must be in league with them.   Pelosi, Schumer, and many other Democrats who argue against the current border policy must all be “cooperating” with MS-13.

The President also takes the actual facts, and turns them upside down to his own advantage.  The most obvious example of this, is his pre-election claim that the voting would be rigged against him.  This was made famous in his debate with Hillary Clinton, where he refused to accept the eventual outcome of the voting if he were to lose.  What we now know, is that the election process (and potentially voting itself) was in fact rigged by Russia, and that Mr. Trump may well have had fore-knowledge of it.  So what he was claiming for the Democrats and Hillary Clinton, was in fact occurring, but to his benefit.

Currently emerging in the President’s “pep rallies” is the “Qanon” phenomena.   This internet based conspiracy sees the United States in the throes of a battle between the evil “Deepstate” and those few heroic leaders who stand “for the people.”  The “Deepstate” criminals of course include Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but also both Presidents Bush, the FBI and the CIA.   And of course Hollywood and the media are included.  Arrayed against them are the “good;” Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, the US military, former General Mike Flynn, the NSA and DIA. and of course, President Donald J Trump.

The evil criminals have caused world turmoil, war and destruction. Thus both Iraq Wars were unnecessary, means of advancing the power of not only the Bushs, but the powerful economic forces behind them (such as Halliburton.)  This puts enough truth into the conspiracy to make it feel “real.”  And Donald Trump now offers a new path, one where the great leaders of the world (like Putin) unify to stand against the criminals.

It goes on and on, but given the evidence about the Trump Organization’s dealings with Russia, and the sordid Cabinet members from Price to Pruitt to Ross to Zinke, it’s hard to picture that these are the “good guys.” And while many see this as foolish internet nonsense, the President himself gave a “wink and a nod” to the movement in his Florida rally, where he mentioned the “sacred” number seventeen to the Q sign bearers (“…I went to Washington maybe seventeen times before I became President, you know what I mean…)

According to the President, Russia didn’t interfere, no matter how many times National Intelligence Director Coats, or Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen, or FBI Director Wray say they did.  And the vast majority of the media is “fake news,” making up stories to make the President look bad.  Who needs Nancy Pelosi to attack, when you can go after CNN’s Jim Acosta as Goebbel’s “enemy of the people.”

When lies become the truth, and good becomes evil, it becomes difficult to know what to believe.  When there is no single “arbiter” of the truth, then everyone is free to choose their own reality.  And with the internet giving us all direct access to the wise,  or the foolish and crazed; many are choosing the latter.  It’s The World Turned Upside Down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orange Tips

They called it the “replicator” on Star Trek.  It was the device they went to for food and drink, and for spare parts for the ship. It was a box in the wall, and all you had to do was say “Saurian Brandy” and a glass with the liquid appeared. Mr. Scott was pleased.

Back then it was in some distant future.  Now you can buy one on Amazon, ranging in price from a couple hundred to several thousand dollars.  3D printers that can “replicate” devices in a plastic form are here (though we haven’t gotten to Saurian Brandy yet.)  At first it was a “model” builder:  turning two-dimensional architectural plans into full models.

Like every item “of the future” it has both positives and negatives.   The cell phone, only thirty years ago a big box, is now our life in our pocket.  It’s a computer, camera, social life, calendar, email, pulse recorder, entertainment, text contact; and oh yeah, the way to call someone.  It’s made our life more convenient, and mobile, and made it incredibly difficult to “disconnect” from the rest of the world, or be “in the moment.”  3D Printers have similar ups and downs.

This week’s crisis, buried under all the Russiagate noise made by the President, is about 3D printers.  They make whatever a computer “blueprint” can be designed to make, and this week we found that Cody Walker and his company in Texas have designed blueprints for multiple styles of guns:  from hand guns to fully automatic assault weapons (they don’t claim the fully automatic part, but in their videos they show one.)  The entire gun is made from plastic, piece by piece created by a 3D printer.

In 1988, President Reagan and Congress passed a law requiring any “plastic” gun to have identifiable metallic pieces in the structure, in order to be detectable to security scanners.  The new “3D” guns have those pieces as well, but they are simply non-functional additions specifically to meet the laws requirements.  You don’t need the metal parts to fire the gun.

So we now are arguing whether the company should be allowed to market their blueprints on the internet, downloadable for immediate gun making use.  These guns will be untraceable (no serial numbers) and undetectable by any security device other than actual hand or visual searches.  Every part of the gun is plastic, including the magazine.  The only metal needed:  the bullets.

The NRA has tacitly given its blessing to this, which struck me as strange.  The NRA is widely supported by the gun making industry; at first glance the 3D guns would seem to be competition they don’t need.  But a statement by Cody Wilson, the blueprint developer, revealed the NRA’s reasoning.  Wilson said that; “gun control is undead.”  With the publication of his blueprints, everyone can now have a gun, undetectable or traceable.  He, and I suspect the NRA, believe they have fundamentally changed the argument.

Wilson believes that his blueprints resolve the gun control debate, making it “dead.”  In an interview on CBS This Morning, he stated:

“What’s going to make me comfortable… is when people stop coming into this office and acting like there’s a debate about it. The debate is over,” Wilson said, adding, “The guns are downloadable. The files are in the public domain. You cannot take them back. You can adjust your politics to this reality. You will not ask me to adjust mine.” 

A Federal judge has blocked further publication of the blueprints, but the files are out there.  And the Trump Administration, who settled a federal lawsuit that was blocking the blueprint release, are sitting on their hands.

So the future is here.  Cody Wilson has made the decision for all of us.  And while the Federal Courts and the State Attorney Generals will fight a rear-guard action to try to put the “genie back in the bottle,” the reality is that plastic guns that fire real lead bullets are with us.  Security will now have to find a new way to detect guns – maybe full body searches at the airport will be standard.  Or maybe, like the toy guns they resemble, we can legislate that real plastic guns need orange tips.  That way we can tell.

 

 

Falling in the Ice Hole

Reading the “Trump Media,” also called Fox News; my Democratic Party is on the verge of schism. We are torn, divided between the “old line” progressives; Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi; and the “new Socialist-Democrats,” Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the newest, new poster person, twenty-eight year old Congressional candidate Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez!

According to Fox News, we are forced into a terrible choice:  become a true European Socialist party, abolishing ICE to open the borders, and granting free college and health care; or stay with a geriatric leadership that offers the “failed Liberal ideas” of the 1960’s.  How can we ever have a chance to govern, we are either revolutionaries or fools lost in the past.  We are told that while Trump may make mistakes, the biggest mistake we can make is to choose a different course.

Just as Fox News doesn’t accept my view of the Republican Party and President Trump, I don’t buy their characterization of my political party.  We are a “big tent” party and always have been, ever since Franklin Roosevelt put together the Depression Era coalition.  We are the political party that had a Southern segregationist, Lyndon Johnson, as the President who lead the nation to new civil rights laws and a war on poverty.  You think we can’t handle some diversity in political views?

The Democratic Party is faced not with a schism of ideas, but with a difference in degree.  Ask any Democrat whether health care should be available to all, and they will all answer yes.  Some will see a compromise path through the private market, which is exactly what the Affordable Care Act offered.  Some will see some form of single payer system, which is exactly what Medicare “for all” would be.  Both know that the United States as a nation pays some $3.3 trillion per year for health care, one of the highest costs in the world, for a system great for some, but failing others.  Every Democrat knows there is no such thing as “free” health care; even Bernie’s plan would transfer private health insurance costs into public funds – that’s called taxes.

All plans transfer costs: the plan we should select is the one that gets the best care to the most people with the lowest possible cost.  That’s the Democratic Party’s goal, and it should be the Republican Party’s goal too, if they would ever offer a plan that wasn’t just status-quo, private insurance, if you can’t afford it, tough.

Ask any Democrat whether anyone who works full time should make enough money to live, and they will all answer yes.  Whether that means a minimum wage adjusted to the realities of where it is earned ($15/hour might be OK for Ohio, but not enough for New York City) or some other form of supporting income; the reality is that the American “dream” should not mean working two or three jobs to try to make ends meet, and maybe still not making it.

Ask any Democrat whether twelve years of public education is enough, and they’ll say no.  All Democrats think we need to do more:  more to encourage education beyond high school, more to reduce the cost of college education, more to control predatory student loan practices.  For example: an investment of extending free public education two more years would have a huge return in income earned and taxes paid.  Education is a “pay me now or pay me later” deal, especially when it comes to crime. Keeping kids in school and getting them the education they need to get a job with a living wage, will reduce the soaring numbers in our prisons; numbers that cost many thousands of dollars per prisoner per year.

Ask almost any Democrat whether we should have completely open and uncontrolled borders, and they will say no.  Ask any Democrat (and hopefully anyone) whether the “zero tolerance, child separation” program enforced by the current Administration is acceptable, and that answer is no as well.  Some Democrats have reacted to those abuses by calling for the abolition of ICE, but abolishing ICE doesn’t mean open borders.  It means if an agency of the US government can enforce such a punitive and inhumane program, then we need to look at whether we should have such an agency, or should we abolish and replace it.  Does “repeal and replace” sound familiar to my Republican friends who didn’t like the Affordable Care Act?  Many Democrats feel the same about ICE.

Democrats are agreed on the goals, where we differ are the means to achieve those goals.  And we differ on whether we think the current leadership is effective or whether we need new Party leaders who can lead us to power and achieving those goals.  That’s not a schism:  it’s a generational change, and a matter of degree.

There is an old story of the Arctic.  There are two kinds of dog sled harnesses:  one has a single line, each dog harnessed to the line, pulling together. The other is each dog on a single line, with all of the lines attached to the front of the sled.  The first harness has more power, and less tangles, but is also prone to disaster.  If the single line breaks, or if the lead dogs falls into an ice hole, then the entire team and sled goes with him.

The second harness is less efficient, with dogs pulling at somewhat different angles, and more prone to tangling.  But if one dog falters, or falls into the ice hole, the rest can pull on and the sled isn’t at risk.  That’s my Democratic Party, pulling in different ways but going in the same general direction.  And we all still believe in the same goals, even if sometimes we get tangled, and even if we pull in different ways to get to the same place.

Sorry Fox News, we aren’t breaking up, or falling in the ice hole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seeing through the Mud

Yesterday, in a series of seemingly incoherent interviews, Trump attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani put forth the next defense of the President in the Russiagate saga. Giuliani dropped a bomb, stating that there was, or may have been, or was rumored to be (depending on the interview) a second meeting in Trump Tower before the meeting with the Russians on June 9^th, 2016. This was a planning session for the actual Russian encounter, with most of the same Trump principals:  Don Jr., Kushner, Manafort, Gates and an unknown fifth. To many, Giuliani seems unhinged or demented, pulling theories and events out of thin air.  He isn’t.  He is performing an important function for the Trump defense.

Watching the Trump Administration deal with the growing Russia crisis, one thing has been consistent. In the past they have denied, denied, denied; then admitted to some things; then finally, when the facts were obvious, say it happened but it didn’t matter.  The June 9^th meeting is the case in point:  it never happened, then it kind of happened, then a letter was written about it misrepresenting what happened, then finally, the emails were released about it and claimed to be “nothing.”  This strategy hasn’t served them well.

Giuliani is attempting a different tack:  he’s trying to get ahead of the story instead of constantly trying to catch-up.  In all likelihood there was a “planning session” before the June 9^thmeeting.  The Trump lawyers think that information is going to come out, likely through Gates’ statements in cooperation with the Mueller team. Rather than be blindsided with a meeting highlighting the Trump Campaign seriousness about the Russian connection, they feel it would be better to get it out now than later.

The Trump defense strategy shift is clear.  Now instead of waiting for the trickle of bad news, they are the ones controlling the release, and getting the “first draft” of the story.  Should the candidate, now President, end up being the “unknown” fifth man at the meeting the groundwork has already been laid:  Giuliani’s almost incoherent ramblings about not finding collusion in the Federal code creates the basis for the “next reality” of Trump’s personal involvement in the Russian meeting.

The President from the outset of the crisis has stated over and over that there was no “collusion.” Now that it is obvious there was, his team is building a case to claim that “collusion” isn’t against the law, so even though the Trump team (having lied for almost two years) “colluded” it doesn’t matter.  They have even gotten the “stamp of approval” from noted Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz.

And for those who accept “collusion” as the only definition for their actions, the Trump lawyers are probably correct.  However, if what the Trump campaign did was a “conspiracy to defraud the United States” (a Mueller charge in multiple indictments) then Federal law has been violated.  Giuliani muddying the terms is simply one more means of confusing the issue.

The third prong of the Trump strategy is to argue that “collusion” with foreigners is a common campaign practice.  They draw an “apples to apples” comparison with the Clinton campaign:  Trump had his Russians, Clinton had her British former MI-6 Agent in Christopher Steele.  If what he did was illegal, then so did she.  This angle of the story is being pushed by Trump-friendly media, including the Washington Times.

And on first glance it does sound persuasive.  If Hillary did it, why shouldn’t Trump?  However, even conceding that the Clinton campaign used the Steele Dossier, a fact still not fully documented; this is not “apples to apples.”   Christopher Steele was an independent contractor, working for another US contractor, Fusion GPS, who had been contracted by attorneys for the Clinton campaign to do opposition research.  Steele was not an arm of any national intelligence service, nor was he operating for a rival nation.

The most recent Mueller indictments have made it apparent what we all already knew:  the Russian government, through their intelligence services, were directly interfering in the 2016 election.  The evidence is growing clear that the Trump campaign anticipated getting high-grade opposition information from the June 9^thmeeting, and were aware this information was coming from the Russian government.  Trump said as much in a speech that week.  That’s a long way from Clinton reading the Steele reports (if her campaign did.) It’s not “apples to apples,” it more like “apples to hot dogs:” not much similarity.

But suppose you give the Trump lawyers their comparison, allowing that both Trump and Clinton committed a crime.  As many drivers pulled over for speeding have discovered:  just because others were breaking the law too doesn’t make you any less guilty.

And finally, Giuliani is participating in the “Democratizing” of the Mueller team, the “seventeen angry Democrats” investigating the President.  If he can damage the creditability of the Mueller investigation, then he hopes to invalidate their outcomes.

All of these machinations will have little bearing on the legal actions the Mueller investigation will take.  Their arena is the Federal Courts, not Fox and Friends or CNN.  And there are other lawyers on the Trump team who are better suited for that, including the newest addition, Emmet Flood, known for helping Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial.

But Giuliani isn’t worried about a case in Federal Court.  He anticipates, probably correctly, that Mueller won’t indict a serving American President.  Mueller will take the traditional approach, producing a report for the House of Representatives outlining the actions of the President, and leaving it up to the House to determine if those actions reach the standards for impeachment.

And, if the Democrats take control of the House as expected in November, it will be a Democratic Judiciary Committee Chairman who will make that determination.  Should they impeach the President, a simple majority vote of the House, then the final outcome will be in control of the Senate.

Here’s where Giuliani’s strategy comes into play:  to remove the President from office requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate.  Even if Democrats should gain control, it would likely only be by a one or two vote margin, far from the sixty-seven required. So Giuliani’s long-term strategy is to muddy the issue so much, that a significant part of the American people, Trump’s base, won’t buy anything the Mueller investigation shows.  That way, vulnerable Republican Senators can vote “with their constituents” and against removing the President.

It’s not demented, or addled.  It’s a realistic view of what could happen in the next year.  The one thing the Giuliani depends on is that politicians will be politicians.

In John F. Kennedy’s book, Profiles in Courage, one of the chapters is about Senator Edmund G. Ross of Kansas.  Ross cast the deciding vote that prevented President Andrew Johnson from being removed.  That vote went against his own Radical Republican faction, and cost him his Senate seat.  It was a time in our history when a politician wasn’t a politician.

We may be arriving at that time again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three Movies

This weekend we took an afternoon and caught a movie.  Politics are never far from our lives, so we watched the newest Rob Reiner film, Shock and Awe.  Starring Woody Harrelson and James Marsden as well as Reiner, the movie follows two reporters of the Knight-Ridder News Agency, as they tried to unlock the secrets leading the United States to invade Iraq in 2002.  Their dramatic discovery:  the “official” reason for invading Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, was not only untrue, but a falsehood created by the leadership of the US government.

It is a story of investigative journalism, and of the Executive Branch manipulating the media to get what they wanted.  While Knight-Ridder got the story right, the “big” media; the New York Times and the Washington Post and NBC, ABC and CBS all fell for the story told by Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, and President Bush.  After the invasion when US troops were mired in Iraq and no weapons of mass destruction found, the New York Times apologized on their front page.  They had been fooled.

The Bush Administration refused to respond to the Knight-Ridder stories, letting them “swing in the wind” while the rest of the media marched along to war.  It is a story with consequences today.  Not only does it tell us not to blindly trust the Executive Branch, but it also reminds us not to blindly trust the media as well. And finally, it tells us to listen to some of the “voices in the wilderness;” sometimes they’re right.

The second movie was a few weeks ago: Stephen Spielberg’s The Post.  Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep star in the story of a powerful woman, Katherine Graham (Streep), taking charge of the Washington Post and making it a national force.  The editor, Ben Bradlee (Hanks), published the Pentagon Papers, classified documents outlining the Pentagon foundation for America’s continued involvement in the Vietnam War.  The Post, and the New York Times, risked legal catastrophe to tell Americans that their government was lying about Vietnam.  It was the beginning of the end of the war, and of American’s trust in their leadership.

Leading us to last night’s movie, one of my favorites:  All the President’s Men.  It is the well-known story of two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) who lead the Washington Post to break the Watergate scandal of President Nixon.  I remember first seeing this movie in the theatre while I was living in Washington, only three years after Nixon’s resignation.  It made my nervous walking in parking garages.

While we all now know what Nixon did, how he conspired to commit crimes, break-ins and buggings, then spent two years of his Presidency personally orchestrating the cover-up:  when Woodward and Bernstein began their work his actions were a close kept secret.  Their dogged reporting, and the willingness of the honest among the “President’s men and women” to tell the truth, is the story of my generation’s biggest political crisis.  The Nixon White House did everything they could to attack the Washington Post (and the New York Times, just as involved in the story) and drive them out of business.

The rhetoric of the Nixon Administration sounds eerily familiar today; attacking the media as biased, claiming some great “silent majority” of support, demanding that only their facts were the “real news.”  The difference today:  we may be so horribly divided, that even evidence as convincing as the Nixon tapes might not be enough to unify us in a conclusion.  Or perhaps even worse, as Rudy Giuliani would have us believe:  that crimes are really not crimes, just “regular business.”

All three movies have the common theme:  that truth may ultimately overcome power.  The Post and All the President’s Men present courageous government insiders, Daniel Ellsberg and Mark Felt, who believed the truth was so important that they were willing to risk their careers, and perhaps their lives, to make it public. They show reporters who ignore the risks to get their story in print.

But Shock and Awe gives us a warning:  that sometimes the corruption of power can overcome the truth. We should be prepared for that as well, as the we deal with the ultimate political crisis we face today.

 

 

 

 

It’s Not on the Form

So a second grade teacher is taking their class of six year olds to the museum.  There are several demonstrations there, and the teacher is unsure what time the kids will come back to the school.  The parents fill out the following form:

---

My child ________________ has permission to go with Ms. Smith to the museum.  I am aware that the time schedule is not determined, and I will be available to pick up my child when they return and the teacher calls me. 

___________________ (parent)  ________ (date). 

---

Most parents when filling out the form will realize the flaw in the system.  How will Ms. Smith call, when they haven’t listed a phone number. The United States Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol division, didn’t.

When children were separated from their parents at the border as part of President Trump’s “zero tolerance” program, the names of the children were entered on a database. Along with their country of origin, gender, age, and other information about the child, the names of the parents, who were being held by BCP, were also entered.

But in the database, there was no place, column or data cell for the location of the parents to be entered. It was a one-way form, a form designed to follow the kids into the Department of Health and Human Services care, but not to return them to their parents.  It was a reasonable system for the “last” crisis at the border, when unaccompanied minors were crossing.  But,when the San Diego Federal Court judge ordered the children to be returned to their parents, there was no electronic way to find them.

Let’s be charitable. Let’s make the assumption, for the moment, that the US Government under President Trump was not callous and uncaring about the children.  And let’s agree that there wasn’t a dark secret plan to kidnap the children.  So what happened?

According to the Washington Post, the “zero tolerance” policy had strong support on the ground on the Southern Border with the Customs and Border Protection service.  The way they saw it:  the border smugglers knew that CBP wouldn’t hold parents with children in custody while awaiting a hearing on a claim of asylum.  CBP believed that smugglers were encouraging adults to use children to avoid detention, and CBP wanted to send a message that this strategy wouldn’t work.

That message resonated among senior officials in the Trump Administration, particularly Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Senior Advisor Stephen Miller.  They could make a strong statement about illegal immigration (and the need for the “wall”) and then use it as a negotiating chip in the immigration reform law debate.  And, when word got back to Central America that children were being taken, it might reduce the number of families that attempted to make the trip.

So the “zero tolerance” policy was implemented.  While there isn’t much question about both the immorality and “optics” of taking children from their parents, the Administration didn’t consider those things to be a problem.  Their base would be in favor of it, and perhaps they could achieve their immigration goals.

But no one thought the process through.  No one was prepared for the wave of children that would need to be cared for. Facilities near the border were already filled with the unaccompanied children, Health and Human Services (who were given custody of the border children) was forced to scatter them throughout the country.  It was a “seat of your pants” operation, no one seems to have planned it out.

In the “old days,” parents would pin the name, address and phone number of a child on their jacket. Now in the digital age, we all depend on electronic information to track and trace our lives.  From knowing when packages arrive, to depending on our phones for our spouse’s number (me for sure – sorry) we depend on the information being available.

So the absence of a data location in the HHS program meant there was no electronic means of finding a child’s parents.  Even now we have hundreds of children that we are unable to return to their parents. It was a one-way system.

We often argue about the morality and ideology driving the Trump Administration.  But what we see in this operation, just as we saw in the Puerto Rican hurricane disaster, is an even more devastating charge:  incompetency.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does Anything Matter?

Last night the breaking news slipped out:  Michael Cohen was in a meeting with Donald Trump when Trump was informed and gave approval to the June 9^th meeting between Trump Campaign officials and known Russian Government representatives to get “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.  He knew and approved before it happened.

OK – I have to do this:

COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION!!!!!

And even better:

CONSPIRACY – CONSPIRACY – CONSPIRACY – CONSPIRACY – CONSPIRACY.

There, I feel better. I’ve waited almost two years to say that.

Michael Cohen, who was the trusted personal lawyer for Donald Trump, is looking for an “exit strategy” to avoid jail.  He is either cooperating, or going to cooperate, with Federal Prosecutors both in his own case in the Southern District of New York and with the Mueller Team. As former Federal Prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg said, “…he’s joining Team USA.”

Cohen was, to quote Hamilton,“…in the room where it happened…”  And, after hearing the tape of Cohen withTrump  discussing the shell LLC to pay off former lovers, we now know that Cohen had no problem bugging himself and his clients.  So there might even be a tape; there are at least one hundred of them.

The spin has already begun. Rudy Giulani, representing President Trump, has called Cohen a “…known liar that cannot be trusted…”  Trump tweeted that he didn’t know about the meeting.  The odd thing though, is that Cohen isn’t the one who released the information about “the meeting.”  The best we can currently figure, it was the Trump side that slipped it to the media, in fact, to their favorite media – CNN.  After over a year and a half of denials, of lies, of possible perjury (Donald Jr’s testimony to Congress that he never informed his father) what’s their strategy?

In the language of nuclear war, this is called a pre-emptive strike.  The logic goes this way:  Cohen has the information, possibly on tape, and that information will ultimately be revealed, perhaps during a trial.  To take the “surprise” value out of the information, and to allow for a concerted effort to destroy Cohen’s reputation and therefore the value of his information, the Trump team decision was to get it out now.

That this strategy implies destroying a trusted employee (Cohen) and throwing both Donald Jr. and Jared Kushner under the “Mueller” bus, shows the absolutely desperate situation of the Trump Team.   If the President really did have knowledge and gave approval to this meeting, he probably has committed conspiracy with the Russian government to illegally interfere with the 2016 election.  He also may well have engaged in a conspiracy of theft from the DNC and the Clinton campaign, using the stolen emails.  If there’s a tape of this meeting, it would be as powerful as the Nixon conversations in the days after the Watergate break-in.

We will soon hear the excuses:  every political campaign would do the same thing, or, we didn’t know this was against the law, we were novice politicians, or, we didn’t get anything out of the meeting anyway.  This meeting has been characterized as a “bust,” where no information, legal or illegal, was presented.  Of course, we only have the word of the participants, Donald Jr and Jared Kushner.  Others aren’t talking, yet.

But if the President knew and approved a meeting, with the intent of receiving Clinton dirt from the Russians, it really doesn’t matter what the outcome of the meeting was.  If you walk into a bank, pull a gun, and say this is a robbery, whether you get the money or not you have committed a crime.

There’s a great Saturday Night Live sketch of the Lester Holt interview with the President, where Trump says he fired FBI Director Comey because of Russia.  Michael Che, playing Holt, stops, looks at the camera, and says “…did I get him, is this all over?”

The answer was that nothing matters.

This isn’t over.  It will take months, perhaps years to play out. But if this piece of information is true, then the President will be forced to ask Congress, and the American people if they are willing to accept his actions; actions that are illegal.  And  then we will  find out if anything really does matter.