The Hilarious Mr. Trump


 
Sarah Sanders would not be good at poker. She has a prominent tell. Her jaw moves to the right and left whenever she is uncomfortable with what she is saying. It’s distracting. On Friday she unconsciously played facial ping-pong for the gathered press crowd.

I’m not going to validate a leak one way or the other out of an internal staff meeting.

Her concern for the fact of a leak supposedly overrode for her what seemed to unite the rest of the moral universe: the tasteless joke itself.

The controversy swirling over what was said inside the White House about Senator John McCain who is battling with brain cancer. McCain expressed strong reservations over the President’s CIA nominee. Well, now it’s been learned that, during a meeting at the White House, a staffer allegedly said of McCain’s opinion, “It doesn’t matter. He’s dying anyway.”

ABC’s Mary Bruce reported on the official White House reaction. There wasn’t any.

Tonight, no explanation, no acknowledgment, and no apology from the White House.

The judgment of News personalities and televised opinion makers was nearly unanimous. The laughing references to John McCain’s life-threatening condition was part of a larger pattern, flowing from the top. The very top. Only professional Trump apologists appeared on screen to offer a strained dissent.

It was all a carbon copy of the original: Donald Trump’s dismissal of John McCain’s heroism in the face of torture during his captivity in the Vietnam war.

He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured, okay? I hate to tell ya.

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Why James Comey Is, and Isn’t, Donald Trump


 

Senator John F. Kennedy had two huge political vulnerabilities.

One was that he was Catholic and many protestants had a deep and abiding distrust of what was sometimes called “popery.” If government somehow fell under the sway of Catholics, the entire country would be run from Rome. The Pope would oppress non-Catholic churches. Democracy itself would disappear. Kennedy dealt with that in a series of public appearances, clearly stating his opposition to any religious interference with basic freedom.

The other vulnerability was that he came from a wealthy family. He would be unable to relate to everyday citizens, insulated as he must be from the cares and pressures of ordinary financial life. He disarmed some of that concern by reaching out sympathetically to the working poor in West Virginia and in other states.

And he used humor. In 1958, he spoke to the Gridiron Club in New York. No recording is available of the future President at that moment. But Chris Matthews quotes from the transcript as Kennedy reads from what he told his audience was a telegram from his very rich father:

Jack, don’t buy one more vote than necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.

The Chris Matthews Show, March 13, 2011

A year and 8 months later, he won the Presidency by a hair. He later told audiences that he felt a little like a fictional mayor elected by a single vote. As Kennedy told it, every time that mayor ventured out, he encountered at least one constituent who would inform him: I’m the vote that put you over the top. You owe your job to me.

Hillary Clinton owes her Presidential loss to many things. If any one of them had not come together, she would be in office today. If the creaky old electoral college, that legacy from the slave-holding south, had been replaced, if she had not swooned from dehydration in the heat that New York summer, if she had devoted one more day to Pennsylvania, if she hadn’t chosen door number one instead of door number two.

But the final blow that did her in, that reduced a decisive 11 point lead into a “mere” 2 points, 3 million votes, was that series of needless public reminders of a gratuitous public scolding by the head of the Federal Bureau of investigation.
Continue reading “Why James Comey Is, and Isn’t, Donald Trump”

Trump’s Mueller Meltdown lol


 
It had been unseasonably mild that December day as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein got ready to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. Nobody knew at the time that his words would fit so neatly what we are seeing now. What is the procedure the Special Counsel will follow if he ever comes across evidence of a crime that is outside of his own jurisdiction?

Representative Zoe Lofgren posed the question:

So, for example, if he is looking at the Russia investigation and he finds out that the person he’s looking at committed a bank robbery, he isn’t required to ignore a bank robbery. Would that be a fair assessment of his responsibilities?

Mr. Rosenstein began to answer.
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The Fading Humor of Presidential Pathos


 
When my long, boring commute is no longer boring, it’s bad news. On good boring days, I usually listen to network broadcasts. That is where I learned about the Comey firing in May.

According to CBS News, Comey was speaking with staff at the FBI’s LA offices when he learned of his ouster. The New York Times reports he first saw breaking news of his demise flashing on the monitors in the room.

Tom Wait, CBS News, May 9, 2017

Not even the courtesy of a face-to-face meeting? That was cold.

The next morning, my friend at the office looked a little haggard. Sometimes the role of manager seems to bear down on him. We have a pretty good relationship, so I thought a little light levity might help.

“I just have one request,” I said. “If I get fired, please don’t let me know by flashing it on a news monitor.” He and I laughed. Mission accomplished.

One part of the broadcast carried meaning that did not become clear until much later.
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The Bravest President


 

There is no way Teddy should have come out alive.

San Juan Hill has become almost cartoonish in our historical imagination. The invasion itself is jeered at as a template for international imperialism, a model for every instance of American intervention. Theodore Roosevelt himself is sometimes portrayed as a borderline comedic figure.

None of that matters.

Military figures, those who actually serve on the battlefield, are regarded with a sort of awe by the rest of us, those of us who, because of circumstance, or luck, or connivance, have never seen combat.

It was by a strange combination of coincidences that a future President survived.

A nearby brigade was commanded by 4 senior officers within 10 minutes, as one after another was killed or carried away with life-threatening wounds.

Four commanding officers in 10 minutes.

American troops fully expected to meet an overwhelming force of thousands of Spanish troops as they charged toward the top of San Juan Hill. They had no way of knowing that 10,000 Spanish troops had been diverted, stationed as reserves in the city of Santiago de Cuba about a mile away. Nobody knows why General Arsenio Linares ordered them held back, away from battle.

So, instead of 10,000 enemy troops, Americans encountered fewer than 800. Most of those turned out to be inexperienced conscripts, newly drafted into battle.

American troops expected heavy fire from the big guns behind concealed Spanish fortresses. They had no way of knowing that those fixed fortifications were not laid out according to any military strategy. Instead, they were aligned in whatever direction geography made convenient. So heavy artillery could not be directed at the oncoming, completely vulnerable, Americans.

The central role of thousands of African American soldiers, and the loss of hundreds in battle, was nearly lost to history. And the point at which Roosevelt went from Kettle Hill to San Juan Heights is still uncertain.

What we do know for sure is that Colonel Theodore Roosevelt led troops into what they had to have thought was near certain death.

Quite a fellow, that Teddy Roosevelt.

Nobody knows what fueled the inner fire that led Roosevelt to physical bravery. The popular speculation was that he lived his life reacting to, and overcoming, the limitations of a sickly childhood. He had been stricken with such severe asthma that it had not been certain he would even survive into adulthood. He found his condition intolerable, and he overcame it with a combination of strenuous exertion and sheer willpower.

He was brave and powerful because he knew no other way to lead a life that he could tolerate.

Some have attempted to peer into the psyche of John F. Kennedy, speculating about what could have driven him into wartime danger. Like Roosevelt, it may have been a childhood of frailty. He was born pounds below a safe and healthy weight. He was stricken with one serious illness after another. At age three, deadly scarlet fever nearly killed him. A grim family joke came to be. If a mosquito bit young Jack, the mosquito would die.
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Why the FBI Ignored the High School Shooter – They Had To


 

It was a major event. Decades after all the main witnesses have passed into history, Frederick Tiffany’s son is still sought out for interviews.

Guys were running towards the woods.

Even after Trooper Tiffany fired a warning shot, they were still running, trying to find an escape. Jeff Tiffany is interviewed by Mike Tanzini for Channel 34 in Binghamton.

And he was ordered to fire a second warning shot because the first one, they didn’t stop running. The second shot they stopped running.

And one of the biggest reversals in law enforcement history began.
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Brownback’s Horrible Policies Might Save the Republic


 

Louis XIV almost certainly never said it. The phrase was attributed to him by his enemies precisely because it would have been an outrageous thing even to think. The words are still easily recognized today.

L’Etat, c’est moi

I am the nation

When we hear modern echoes identifying an individual with the state, no matter how faint those echoes, we still take notice.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus did not see much in Donald Trump’s State of the Union to applaud. So they didn’t.

Donald Trump reacted:

…even on positive news, really positive news like that — they were like death. And un-American. Un-American.

Failing to applaud my President is an insult to more than a mere individual. It is an insult to America.

I mean they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.

As it turns out, those African Americans, those Democratic members of Congress, were worse than un-American.

Can we call that treason?

The boisterous presentation, and the crowd reaction, may suggest the President was joking.

Of course. Or half joking. Or some other fraction.

He was not joking a few weeks before when, during a break from a golf outing, he spoke about the ongoing investigation into possible campaign conspiracies with Russia. He seemed explicitly to identify himself as a personification of the country. Any investigation into his own possible wrongdoing hurts, not him, but America itself. Here are his words:

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Trump Kills


 
When the arrest was announced in mid-January, it was accompanied by even more sobering news. The one-time US intelligence officer, a trusted employee of the CIA had revealed to the Chinese government a list of informants within that country. These were people without any sort of diplomatic immunity. Within a week, American analysts had been able to count up some of the casualties. The Chinese dictatorship had arrested and executed at least 20 people as a direct result of that leak.

And it got worse. Investigators believe the Chinese then shared information with the regime of Vladimir Putin. New information about US methods and technological capabilities have already led to arrests and executions in Russia.

The list of the dead will grow.

The actual number of executions will probably remain murky, hidden well into the future. Intelligence agencies are cautious about such matters. Releasing the names, and even the numbers, would allow a bit of reverse engineering, giving opposing analysts a new starting point. If we know you have that numerical information, we will know that you were able to obtain it, and we may be able to figure out how. And if we are the Chinese government or the Putin regime, we will have a deterrent you in the United States will not. We can summarily hold secret executions. And we will.

It is unknown, and unknowable, how many US assets were caught and killed in the mid-1970s after CIA employee Philip Agee published the names of 250 secret employees. Only a few killings were documented, the names of the victims released. A few years later he went on to publish 2000 more names.

Getting people killed does not always require releasing their names. Information can often be gleaned out of secondary data.
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Trump Law


 
How would anyone deal with a sudden fire, demolishing a home, destroying private possessions representing experiences over a lifetime? What if it happened to an important accidental witness, testifying against powerful political figures? What if it occurred during her absence from home, on a trip to give testimony to Congress?

What if she and her family were the targets of arson?

I wonder what sort of courage it took for Jill Simpson to take the risks she took. A few days after the fire, she was tailed at night along a lonely rural Mississippi road for miles by a large automobile which eventually overtook her, then forced her own car off the road.

Twice.
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Shadows of War, a River of Blood


 

Fifteen years ago, a fictional President walks past his Intelligence Director.

President Bartlet: What’s the CIA know that I should know?

Director Clark: Neighbors are… swapping family members.

The President passes the information on to his Chief of Staff:

Bartlet: Clark says neighbors are swapping family members in Khundu.

Leo: Really?

Then to Leo’s deputy:

Bartlet: Hey, Josh. There’s intelligence that Khundunese neighbors in the country are swapping family members.

Josh: Sorry, I don’t – I don’t unders…

Bartlet: For the night, they’re swapping family members, you know, and sleeping in each other’s houses.

Few of us would recognize the terrible signal this represents, the presage of genocidal atrocity. Those who have spent their professional lives would remember what happened in Rwanda, as Hutus prepared to butcher Tutsies to the edge of extinction.

Experts would know what the Serb dominated government ordered done to Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina leading up to the killing fields.
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