Wednesday, January 18, 2017

"THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!"



I wrote a lengthy post about this article:

U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, faced a skeptical and at times testy crowd Tuesday as dozens of people arrived at an afternoon meeting to make sure he knew they would not let the Affordable Care Act end without a fight.
Pointing out how conservative the district is that Rep. Brady represents, and how much the article indicated he was out of touch with his constituents on the usefulness of the ACA.  My favorite bit was at the end:

It was clear that local organizers of the event had not anticipated so much spontaneous dissent. Chamber CEO J.J. Hollie remarked at the beginning that the crowd was larger and more varied than expected, making a pointed comment that word must have seeped out on social media.

This was not the first meeting where elected officials who favor repealing the ACA have encountered unhappy constituents. A video of Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., sneaking out early of a town hall meeting has made the rounds of the internet. Frustration boiled over as those who opposed a repeal were unable to speak with him.
Damned social media, letting people we don't want to represent into meetings with the Representative!  But the more interesting story is not this one out of Texas, but the many coming in from across the country.  That bit about Mike Coffman, the first report of dissent about what Paul Ryan and the GOP want to do.  He got "partisan activists," it seems:

"Yesterday was unfortunate because partisan activists showed up only to disrupt the event I was holding at Aurora Central Library. I have been doing five minute one-on-one constituent meetings for the last five years although I do allow small groups, if they share the same issue concerns. This gives an opportunity for everyone to be heard and not just the loudest voices in the room."

The video above is from that link.  Watch the people singing "America" and "This Land is Your Land" and chanting "This is what democracy looks like!"  Damned partisan activists!

Texas and Colorado:  and then Grand Rapids, Michigan:

"Do you or do you not support the immediate repeal of the Affordable Care Act with or without a replacement?" one attendee asked.

When Amash answered, saying he expects the burden of replacing the federal law upon repeal to fall to individual state governments, the crowd erupted with dissent.
And in Virginia:

I am a physician, really worried about the effect of the repeal of the ACA on my patients. I have been calling Garrett, my Republican Rep from Charlottesville area of VA to see what his position is. His staff tell me that “We have not discussed this with the representative yet” – which of course is the same thing as saying he is running away from having a position.
Remember the attempt to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics, and how fast the House reversed course on that?  There's a reason Paul Ryan wanted to repeal the ACA as soon as Trump's hand comes off the Bible on Friday, but more and more it looks like he's not going to get there.

If history is any guide, anyway.
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Monday, January 16, 2017

Oh, I fully intend to: remembering Dr. King in 2017

1967:

I came to see this in a personal experience here in Chicago last summer. In all the speaking I have done in the United States before varied audiences, including some hostile whites, the only time I have ever been booed was one night in our regular weekly mass meetings by some angry young men of our movement. Now Iwent home that night with an ugly feeling. Selfishly I thought of my suffering and sacrifices over the last twelveyears. Why would they boo one so close to them? But as I lay awake thinking. I finally came to myself. And Icould not for the life of me have less impatience and understanding for those young men.  For twelve years, I and others like me, have held out radiant promises of progress. I had preached to them about my dream. I had lectured to them about the not too distant day when they would have freedom, all here, now. I had urged them to have faith in America and in white society. Their hopes had soared. They were now booing me because they felt  that we were unable to deliver on our promises. They were booing because we had urged them to have faith in people who had too often proved to be unfaithful. They were now hostile because they were watching the dream that they had so readily accepted, turn into a frustrating nightmare. This situation is all the more ominous in view of the rising expectations of men the world over. The deep rumblings that we hear today, the rumblings of discontent, is the thunder of disinherited masses rising from dungeons of oppressions to the bright hills of freedom. All over the world like a fever, freedom is spreading in the widest liberation movement in history. The great masses of people are determined to end the exploitation of their races and lands. And in one majestic chorus they are singing in the worlds of our freedom song, “ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around”.

And so the collision course is set. The people cry for freedom and the congress attempts to legislate repression. Millions, yes billions, are appropriated for mass murder; but the most meager pittance for foreign aid for international development is crushed in the surge of reaction. Unemployment rages at a major depression level in the black ghettos, but the bi-partisan response is an anti-riot bill rather than a serious poverty program.The modest proposals for model cities, rent supplement and rat control, pitiful as they were to began with, get caught in the maze of congressional inaction. And I submit to you tonight, that a congress that proves to be more anti-negro than anti-rat needs to be dismissed. It seems that our legislative assemblies have adopted Nero as their patron saint and are bent on fiddling while our cities burn.  Even when the people persist and in the face of great obstacles, develop indigenous leadership and self-help approaches to their problems and finally tread the forest of bureaucracy to obtain existing government funds, the corrupt political order seeks to crush even this beginning of hope. The case of CDGM in Mississippi is the most publicized example but it is a story repeated many times across our nation.Our own experience here in Chicago is especially painfully present. After an enthusiastic approval by H.E. W’s Department of Adult Education, SCLC began an adult literacy project to aid 1,000 young men and women who have been pushed out of overcrowded ghetto schools, in obtaining basic [literary] skills prerequisite to receiving jobs.

We had an agreement with A&P stores for 750 jobs through SCLC’s job program, Operation Breadbasket and had recruited over 500 pupils the first week. At that point Congressmen Paccinski and the Daley machine intervened and demanded that Washington cut off our funds or channel them through the machine controlled poverty program in Chicago. Now we have no problem with administrative supervision, but we do have a desire to be independent of machine control and the Democratic Party patronage network. For this desire for a politically independent approach to the needs of our brothers, our funds are being stopped as of September 15th and a very meaningful program discontinued. Yes the hour is dark, evil comes forth in the guise of good. It is a time of double talk when men in high places have a high blood pressure of deceptive rhetoric and an anemia of concrete performance.  We cry out against welfare hand outs to the poor but generously approve an oil depletion allowance to make the rich, richer. Six Mississippi plantations receive more than a million dollars a year, not to plant cotton but no provision is made to feed the tenant farmer who is put out of work by the government subsidy. The crowning achievement in hypocrisy must go to those staunch Republicans and Democrats of the Midwest and West who were given land by our government when they came here as immigrants from Europe. They were given education through the land grant colleges. They were provided with agricultural agents to keep them abreast of forming trends, they were granted low interest loans to aid in the mechanization of their farms and now that they have succeeded in becoming successful, they are paid not to farm and these are the same people that now say to black people, whose ancestors were brought to this country in chains and who were emancipated in 1863 without being given land to cultivate or bread to eat; that they must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. What they truly advocate is Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor.

I wish that I could say that this is just a passing phase in the cycles of our nation’s life; certainly times of war, times of reaction throughout the society but I suspect that we are now experiencing the coming to the surface of a triple prong sickness that has been lurking within our body politic from its very beginning. That is the sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism. Not only is this our nation’s dilemma it is the plaque of western civilization. As early as 1906 W. E. B Dubois prophesized that the problem of the 20th century, would be the problem of the color line, now as we stand two-thirds into this crucial period of history we know full well that racism is still that hound of hell which dogs the tracks of our civilization. Ever since the birth of our nation, White America has had a Schizophrenic personality on the question of race, she has been torn between selves. A self in which she proudly profess the great principle of democracy and a self in which she madly practices the antithesis of democracy. This tragic duality has produced a strange indecisiveness and ambivalence toward the Negro, causing America to take a step backwards simultaneously with every step forward on the question of Racial Justice; to be at once attracted to the Negro and repelled by him, to love and to hate him. There has never been a solid, unified and determined thrust to make justice a reality for Afro-Americans. The step backwards has a new name today, it is called the white backlash, but the white backlash is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities and ambivalences that have always been there. It was caused neither by the cry of black power nor by the unfortunate recent wave of riots in our cities. The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation.

This does not imply that all White Americans are racist, far from it. Many white people have, through a deep moral compulsion fought long and hard for racial justice nor does it mean that America has made no progress in her attempt to cure the body politic of the disease of racism or that the dogma of racism has been considerably modified in recent years. However for the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country, even today, is freedom and equality while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists. Racism can well be, that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on western civilization. Arnold Toynesbee has said that some twenty-six civilizationhave risen upon the face of the Earth, almost all of them have descended into the junk heap of destruction. The decline and fall of these civilizations, according to Toynesbee, was not caused by external invasion but by internal decay. They failed to respond creatively to the challenges impingent upon them. If America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish racism, some future historian will have to say, that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men.

The second aspect of our afflicted society is extreme materialism. An Asian writer has portrayed our dilemma in candid terms, he says, “you call your thousand material devices labor saving machinery, yet you are forever busy. With the multiplying of your machinery you grow increasingly fatigued, anxious, nervous, dissatisfied. Whatever you have you want more and where ever you are you want to go somewhere else. Your devices are neither time saving nor soul saving machinery. They are so many sharp spurs which urge you on to invent more machinery and to do more business”. This tells us something about our civilization that cannot be cast aside as a prejudiced charge by an eastern thinker who is jealous of Western prosperity. We cannot escape the indictment. This does not mean that we must turn back the clock of scientific progress. No one can overlook the wonders that science has wrought for our lives. The automobile will not abdicate in favor of the horse and buggy or the train in favor of the stage coach or the tractor in favor of the hand plow or the scientific method infavor of ignorance and superstition. But our moral lag must be redeemed; when scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly maximize the minimum and minimize the maximum we sign the warrant for our own day of doom.

It is this moral lag in our thing-oriented society that blinds us to the human reality around us and encourages us in the greed and exploitation which creates the sector of poverty in the midst of wealth. Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the protestant ethic of hard word and sacrifice, the fact is that Capitalism was build on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor –both black and white, both here and abroad. If Negroes and poor whites do not participate in the free flow of wealth within our economy, they will forever be poor, giving their energies, their talents and their limited funds to the consumer market but reaping few benefits and services in return. The way to end poverty is to end the exploitation of the poor, ensure them a fair share of the government services and the nation's resources. I proposed recently that a national agency be established to provide employment for everyone needing it. Nothing is more socially inexcusable than unemployment in this age. In the 30s when the nation was bankrupt it instituted such an agency, the WPA, in the present conditions of a nation glutted with resources, it is barbarous to condemn people desiring work to soul sapping inactivity and poverty. I am convinced that even this one, massive act of concern will do more than all the state police andarmies of the nation to quell riots and still hatreds. The tragedy is, our materialistic culture does not possess the statesmanship necessary to do it. Victor Hugo could have been thinking of 20th Century America when he wrote, “there’s always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher classes”. The time has come for America to face the inevitable choice between materialism and humanism. We must devote at least as much to our children’s education and the health of the poor as we do to the care of our automobiles and the building of beautiful, impressive hotels.

We must also realize that the problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be  solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power. We must further recognize that the ghetto is adomestic colony. Black people must develop programs that will aid in the transfer of power and wealth into thehands of residence of the ghetto so that they may in reality control their own destinies. This is the meaning of  New Politics. People of will in the larger community, must support the black man in this effort.

The final phase of our national sickness is the disease of militarism. Nothing more clearly demonstrates our nation’s abuse of military power than our tragic adventure in Vietnam. This war has played havoc with the destiny of the entire world. It has torn up the Geneva Agreement, it has seriously impaired the United Nations, it has exacerbated the hatred between continents and worst still between races. It has frustrated our development at home, telling our own underprivileged citizens that we place insatiable military demands above their critical needs. It has greatly contributed to the forces of reaction in America and strengthened the military industrial complex. And it has practically destroyed Vietnam and left thousands of American and Vietnamese youth maimed and mutilated and exposed the whole world to the risk of nuclear warfare. Above all, the War in Vietnam has revealed what Senator Fulbright calls, “our nations arrogance of power”. We are arrogant in professing to be concerned about the freedom of foreign nations while not setting our own house in order. Many of our Senators and Congressmen vote joyously to appropriate billions of dollars for the War in Vietnam and many of these same Senators and Congressmen vote loudly against a Fair Housing Bill to make it possible for a Negro veteran of Vietnam to purchase a decent home. We arm Negro soldiers to kill on foreign battlefields but offer little protection for their relatives from beatings and killings in our own South. We are willing to make a Negro 100% of a citizen in Warfare but reduce him to 50% of a citizen on American soil.

The first paragraph could be the experience of President Barack Obama.  For the rest, only the particulars of history have changed; the fundamentals of the country are unaltered, indeed, have snapped back into the place they were 50 years ago.  We have no one who speaks to us this way today and if we did, we would treat her or him as Dr. King was treated 50 years ago.

We would do better to open our hearts and our minds.
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Doing what the PEOTUS asked


Bernie Sanders is wrong:

Yes. The next problem has to do with going issue by issue. This is happening right now. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer went onto the Rachel Maddow show on the same day, and they said, “The American people agree with us, issue by issue, each case and we’re going to press Trump issue by issue, and we’re going to start with health care and go on to other things.” What they’re missing is values.

They’re missing the idea that many Americans who depend on health care, affordable health care, for example, have strict-father positions and voted for Trump against their interests. And this is something has been known for ages, that a lot of poor conservatives vote against their material interests, because they’re voting for their worldview. And the reason for it is that their moral worldview defines who they are. They are not going to vote against their own definition of who they are. 

But not for the reasons George Lakoff thinks:

What you’ll learn in those courses is what is called Enlightenment reason, from 1650, from Descartes. And here’s what that reasoning says: What makes us human beings is that we are rational animals and rationality is defined in terms of logic. Recall that Descartes was a mathematician and logician. He argued that reasoning is like seeing a logical proof. Secondly, he argued that our ideas can fit the world because, as he said, “God would not lie to us.” The assumption is that ideas directly fit the world.

They’re also, Descartes argued, disembodied. He said that if ideas were embodied, were part of the body, then physical laws would apply to them, and we would not have free will. And in fact, they are embodied, physical laws do apply to them, and we do not have absolute free will. We’re trapped by what the neural systems of our brains  have accumulated. We can only see what our brains allow us to understand, and that’s an important thing.

So what he said, basically, was that there are no frames, no embodiment, no metaphor — none of the things people really use to reason. Moreover if we think logically and we all have the same reasoning, if you just tell people the facts, they should reason to the same correct conclusion. And that just isn’t true. And that keeps not being true, and liberals keep making the same mistake year after year after year. So that’s a very important thing
For one thing, Donald Trump didn't win because he garnered overwhelming support from a majority of the electorate.  He won because Hillary Clinton refused to listen to Howard Dean, and assumed the active support of "traditional" Democratic voters who didn't bother to turn out because they were expected to, but never encouraged to.  Black voters in the South certainly didn't vote for Donald Trump, but their turnout was lower than 2012 because Clinton's campaign didn't get out their vote:  they just considered their vote as given.  Had Clinton actually campaigned in Texas, she might have won the state.  She certainly got closer to winning it than any Democratic candidate since Texas went blood-red.  Trump only won by the quirk of the electoral college and by Clinton running a poor national campaign.

If Donald Trump and his promises were so popular, would this be happening?

On Saturday, Republican Rep. Mike Coffman held an event for his constituents at a public library in Aurora, Colorado. At least 150 constituents showed up, most of them hoping to ask Coffman about his recent vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his plans for a replacement. But only about 70 people got to meet with Coffman: Despite booking a large room with ample space, Coffman allowed in only four constituents at once for five minutes at a time. When the crowd grew restless, police put up crime scene tape and Coffman snuck out the back door—six minutes before the event was scheduled to end.

Trump didn't win because he kept making people think of an elephant.  If that were the case, his approval rating right now wouldn't be the lowest ever recorded for an incoming President.

In fact, let's run this entire conversation through Lakoff's analysis:

In an interview on ABC's "This Week," Priebus responded to Rep. John Lewis' (D-GA) comment that Trump is not "a legitimate president" by denying that Republicans ever questioned the legitimacy of Obama's election victory.

"I and we look up to John Lewis and his historic contribution to civil rights and voting rights," Priebus said. "And in particular his—"

"But the President-elect said he was all talk and no action!" George Stephanopoulos interrupted, referring to tweets Trump posted Saturday morning lashing out at the Georgia congressman and civil rights icon.

"But, let me answer, but here's the problem," Priebus said. "We need folks like John Lewis and others who I think have been champions of voter rights to actually recognize the fact that Donald Trump was duly elected."

He called it "incredibly disappointing" and "irresponsible" for someone of Lewis' stature to question Trump's legitimacy as president.

"I think in fact President Obama could step up," Priebus said, suggesting that the White House should come out in Trump's favor.

"But isn't it harder to do that after a tweet like that from the President-elect?" Stephanopoulos asked.

"But George, hang on! John Lewis stood up in an interview and said that Donald trump was not a legitimate president! That's insanity, and it's wrong!" Priebus replied. "You're worried about a tweet that says 'get back to work instead of questioning my legitimacy'? Too bad!"

"We just had Senator Sanders on the program. He did not question the legitimacy of the President-elect," Stephanopoulos said. "But he did say that it was right to bring up questions like this because of Donald Trump's past and questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama with those years and years of questions about where he was born."

"Donald Trump's made it clear certainly over the last few years that President Obama was born in Hawaii," Priebus claimed.

"Not until the end of the campaign!" Stephanopoulos replied.

"But hang on a second, George, we're not questioning the legitimacy of the outcome of the election," Priebus said. "You didn't have Republicans questioning whether or not Obama legitimately beat John McCain in 2008."

"It is a fact that Donald Trump was questioning whether President Obama was eligible to serve as president under the Constitution," Stephanopoulos countered.

"And many people were, George, but that's been resolved for years now, and it's been resolved for at least two years in Donald Trump's mind!" Priebus hit back.

"Just a factual point," Stephanopoulos interrupted, speaking over Priebus. "He didn't stop raising those questions until late in this campaign, not two years."

"But look, George, that's not the point!" Priebus said, visibly agitated. "The point is not where Barack Obama was born! The point is that we've got congressmen on the Democratic side of the aisle that are questioning the legitimacy of President-elect Trump."

A commenter at TPM said Priebus and Stephanopolous were using different definitions of "legitimate" there.  Perhaps, but does it matter?  Priebus is simply lying.  He's deflecting all criticism of Trump and insisting the only person who can be criticized here is John Lewis.  Now, frankly, that's the kind of criticism Martin Luther King faced in his day.  If you imagine Dr. King was a revered figure, that his "I have a dream" speech was the only speech he had to give, that his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" opened the eyes of a nation as they turned to him for guidance and solace and reconciliation with their past; well, then, what Priebus said probably sounds legitimate to you.

But that's not likely.

Do the Democrats counter Priebus with sage wisdom?  Or do they go one step past Stephanopolous and simply call him a bald-faced liar who can't be trusted to report on the state of the weather outside?  Because that conversation is simply insane.  One need not dissect it, argue with it, explain it, or analyze it.  It is simply bullshit, and should be called same.

It's what Donald Trump would do.  It's the "straight talk" that Lakoff says has made Trump so popular (again, so popular his approval rating is at an historic low before he takes office.  It will only do down from there; it always does.).  I don't have to not think of an elephant when I hear the remarks of Mr. Priebus:  I'm already thinking of a man so full of shit his eyes are brown; of a mendacious lying weasel who would back the bus over his grandmother if he thought it would advance is career; a Grima Wormtongue, a toady, a bug I'd step on if I found it on the kitchen floor when the lights went on.  People who can lie that easily (and poorly) have no place in decent company.

That's what I think of.  Well, that and the fact challenges to Obama's legitimacy as President go back for 8 years.  And if you're being particular about what Priebus claimed, you can find a list of prominent GOP politicians who challenged Obama's legitimacy as President here.

Josh Marshall hits on this point in his reaction to the way the press is already covering Trump, and what should be done about it:

Trump wants to bully the press and profit off the presidency. He's told us this clearly in his own words. We need to accept the reality of both. The press should cover him on that basis, as a coward and a crook. The big corporate media organizations may not be able to use those words, I understand, but they should employ that prism. The truth is that his threats against the press to date are ones it is best to laugh at. If Trump should take some un- or extra-constitutional actions, we will deal with that when it happens. I doubt he will or can. But I won't obsess about it in advance. Journalists should be unbowed and aggressive and with a sense of humor until something happens to prevent them from doing so. Trump is a punk and a bully. People who don't surrender up their dignity to him unhinge him.

Much the same applies to the endless chatter about 'conflicts of interest' and the insufficiency of his plan to separate himself from his businesses. Why are we still saying Trump isn't doing enough to avoid conflicts of interest? He's made clear he wants to profit off his presidency. Let's accept that. That is what he wants to do. If you're a journalist, start documenting the details. If you're an activist or politician start mobilizing against his corruption.
We know what Trump is doing.  Quit trying to prove it to the satisfaction of people who will never be satisfied (the mythical "Trump supporters" who must be convinced to abandon Trump, or all hope is lost; i.e., the same people Lakoff would have us worry about) and just start talking about the situation as it is.  Don't worry about thinking of an elephant; worry about dealing with reality.

Besides, Reince Priebus really is a mendacious weasel.  Maybe we should try not to think of a weasel when we think of him.

But to get back to Bernie Sanders for a moment, a man who always manages to sound like the shrillest of his internet die-hard supporters (the ones who still say Sanders would have defeated Trump, where Hillary never stood a chance).  The same people who he thinks agree with him on every issue also think "Obamacare" is an abomination but the Affordable Care Act is a godsend.  They are the same people who want the government to stay out of their Medicare, and who think they paid into Social Security, and all they are taking out of it is their own money.  They agree with Sanders, in other words, that the ACA and Social Security and Medicare are important; but they don't agree on why.  And while they are happy for the government to take care of them, they are convinced it doesn't, and instead spends inordinate sums in "handouts" to illegal immigrants and other freeloaders.  And by the way they think taxes are only levied on U.S. citizens, and non-citizens somehow avoid paying taxes altogether; unless they are in this country "legally", in which case this magic shield that avoids taxation evaporates.  Of course Bernie Sanders doesn't assume everyone is fundamentally rational or he'd never have used Simon and Garfunkel's "America" and stirring scenes of white folk in his first campaign ad.  But like the rest of us, he preaches it round and square as it suits him.

And then there's Lakoff's analysis of Descartes.  Is he serious with that stuff, or does he just think it makes him sound smart to mention a name he's sure will be recognized?  Actually, the distinction between humans and other animals based on reason goes back to Aristotle, and was championed by the Church, to whom Descartes was making careful obeisance (if he got too far out over his skis, he knew he'd never make the landing).  Descartes didn't invent the idea that humans had souls which made them rational, and animals were automatons:  he simply translated Church teachings into the secular philosophical language of his day.  The idea that Descartes preserved that for the sake of free will, and that we "know" free will "doesn't exist," is so amateurishly wrong it's laughable.

Now don't think of a hyena.  Yes, we can only understand what our brains can comprehend, but that's not an argument limited to sociology.  It applies to Lakoff's reasoning, as well.  And one thing we can understand is Godel's proof of incompleteness in formal systems, so that there are always questions a system can formulate which the system itself cannot answer.  And we have Wittgenstein's insight (no slouch in rational thinking, he) that there are realities which don't fit into rational expression at all.  Now, are human beings fundamentally rational?  No; but Aristotle himself understood that.  Lakoff is setting fire to a straw man, not presenting even a minor insight.

And last but not least, of course, there's the hidden wound of American racism; the still fundamental cultural, legal, and political issue of our country, the sin we will not confess, the root we will not extirpate, the damage we will not repair.  Donald Trump won, ultimately, because of it, and to not even mention that is to commit yet another act of racism against the people Trump will surely injure in the next four years.

Or maybe the problem is with those of us who do think Black Lives Matter.
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Sunday, January 15, 2017

Pardon Me?

In the spirit of Gerald Ford and George H.W Bush, I really think Barack Obama needs to issue a pre-emptive pardon to Hillary Clinton on January 19th, or maybe early on the 20th.




Again, Trump is referring to this:

Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who investigated Donald Trump’s alleged Kremlin links, was so worried by what he was discovering that at the end he was working without pay, The Independent has learned.

Mr Steele also decided to pass on information to both British and American intelligence officials after concluding that such material should not just be in the hands of political opponents of Mr Trump, who had hired his services, but was a matter of national security for both countries.

However, say security sources, Mr Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to believe there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. 
Interestingly, these connections have more to do with the Russia connection than with the reports of blackmail material.  Just to put that in context of recent history:

By late July and early August MI6 was also receiving information about Mr Trump. By September, information to the FBI began to grow in volume: Mr Steele compiled a set of his memos into one document and passed it to his contacts at the FBI. But there seemed to be little progress in a proper inquiry into Mr Trump. The Bureau, instead, seemed to be devoting their resources in the pursuit of Hillary Clinton’s email transgressions.

The New York office, in particular, appeared to be on a crusade against Ms Clinton. Some of its agents had a long working relationship with Rudy Giuliani, by then a member of the Trump campaign, since his days as public prosecutor and then Mayor of the city.

As the election approached, FBI director James Comey made public his bombshell letter saying that Ms Clinton would face another email investigation. Two days before that Mr Giuliani, then a part of the Trump team, talked about “a surprise or two you’re going to hear about in the next few days. We’ve got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn things around”.

Jason Chaffetz, the same person who wants to question the head of the Office of Government Ethics because he dared criticize Trump's claim about how he will put his businesses in a "blind trust," has said he will continue to investigate Clinton's use of a private e-mail server.  Would that lead to referring criminal charges to the DOJ?  Well, when the PEOTUS says Ms. Clinton is "guilty as hell," why should anyone think it will stop with his inflammatory tweets?

This is already shaping up to be one of the most corrupt and clueless administrations in U.S. history.  This tweet, in 6 days, will be illegal:


The President can't promote a particular company.  It's a violation of federal law.  Does anyone expect Trump to suddenly become aware of that in a week's time, and act accordingly?  And that is the smallest, least important, of his infractions.

So the only decent thing for Barack Obama to do, the one thing that cannot be undone, is to issue a pardon to Hillary Clinton for anything she might have done which might be construed as an illegal act.  Whether she accepts it is another matter, but she doesn't deserve to be hounded, much as her husband was, by an overzealous prosecutor with an axe to grind.
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John Lewis should have died for your sins


So now John Lewis is responsible for the state of the poor in this nation, and our "inner cities" are aflame and awash in criminality.  From coast to coast, the major urban areas of America resemble "Escape from New York" combined with the great Chicago fire.

Why is this man's mind stuck in the 1970's?

And, as a reminder, it is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2017






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Saturday, January 14, 2017

Let's all sing like the birdies sing....

Just follow this and see if it makes any sense:






Well, the allegations (phony or not has yet to be determined, especially the claims about money from Russia) were certainly put together by Trump's political opponents and "sleazebag political operatives."  But he can't finish the thought without blaming U.S. intelligence agencies again.  This report wasn't released by U.S. intelligence, it was in circulation for months by the private firm that produced it, or other private actors.  But Trump can't blame Russia.  And why is that, again?

I don’t attribute any of this to back-channel phone calls or an alleged secret meeting in Prague. But I’m at a loss to explain, in the absence of collusion, why Trump and his coterie would behave this way, and why Pence would go join in their attacks on the intelligence “bureaucracy.” Something is deeply wrong with the incoming president-elect and his White House team. They seem not to understand, or to care, that their job is to represent and protect the United States, not Russia. Their behavior in the past two weeks makes this problem indisputable. Until we know more, they cannot be trusted.

Saletan has a very carefully amassed mountain of evidence to support his still too-cautious-by-half conclusion.  There really isn't anything more that can be known which would justify Trump's actions as Saletan catalogues them, or as presented in these tweets.  And while this investigation won't necessarily be the most thorough possible (who knows, yet?), it certainly indicates attention will be paid:

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee said the panel will investigate allegations Russia used cyber attacks to influence the U.S. presidential election, including any links between Russia and the political campaigns.

The committee plans to interview senior officials of both the Trump and Obama administrations and may issue subpoenas to compel testimony, the panel’s Republican chairman, Richard Burr, and its top Democrat, Mark Warner, said in a statement.
Trump's report won't be the only one out there; but if his report exonerates the Russians, it will be the most telling.

Posted by at No comments:

Holy Shit





No, not that, really; this:

It's all about this:

“I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president,” Lewis told Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they have destroyed the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.”
Politics really is making the strangest bedfellows.

Adding:  is Trump's racism again on display?  What makes you ask that?

And of course we have to keep this in mind:

Lewis's comments come from a particularly powerful source: A black member of Congress and major civil-rights figure. While Lewis didn't cite allegations of bigotry and racism made against Trump, the whole thing can't help but hearken back to Trump's own questioning of the legitimacy of his predecessor, Barack Obama. For years, Trump raised questions about whether Obama was born in the United States and thus could serve legitimately as president. Obama eventually produced a birth certificate in 2012, but Trump only acknowledged Obama was born in the United States a few months ago.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus were particularly incensed by Trump's long-running questioning of the legitimacy of the first black president, saying it amounted to bigotry and a racial dog-whistle. After Trump finally admitted Obama was born in the United States in September 2016, members of the CBC held a press conference to denounce Trump.

At the time, Lewis urged Trump to seek forgiveness.

As a public figure Trump is simply beneath contempt; and yet he keeps sinking lower.
Posted by at 1 comment:

Friday, January 13, 2017

Ariel Poems: "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees"


There are several attitudes towards Christmas,
Some of which we may disregard:
The social, the torpid, the patently commercial,
The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight),
And the childish – which is not that of the child
For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel
Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree
Is not only a decoration, but an angel.
The child wonders at the Christmas Tree:
Let him continue in the spirit of wonder
At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext;
So that the glittering rapture, the amazement
Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree,
So that the surprises, delight in new possessions
(Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell),
The expectation of the goose or turkey
And the expected awe on its appearance,
So that the reverence and the gaiety
May not be forgotten in later experience,
In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium,
The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure,
Or the piety of the convert
Which may be tainted with a self-conceit
Displeasing to God and disrespectful to the children
(And here I remember also with gratitude
St. Lucy, her carol, and her crown of fire):
So that before the end, the eightieth Christmas
(By “eightieth” meaning whichever is the last)
The accumulated memories of annual emotion
May be concentrated into a great joy
Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion
When fear came upon every soul:
Because the beginning shall remind us of the end
And the first coming of the second coming.

--T.S. Eliot

I suppose this seems to belong in Christmas, not Epiphany; but the spirit of it seems to point more toward the latter.  And it is the last of the Ariel poems, although it won't be the last posted here.
Posted by at 1 comment:

Why there is an Article I, Sec. 9, in the U.S. Constitution


First Amendment be damned?

I've gotten a little too deep into arguments with conspiracy theorists in Salon comments, who argue that Glenn Greenwald has the goods on this dossier story, because it was released (per Greenwald) by the CIA to CNN, who then (somehow) got Buzzfeed to publish it, all on behalf of the "Deep State."

Which is all pretty much Alex Jones territory, but where Mr. Jones is a crank, Mr. Greenwald is a font of wisdom and truth, and where the U.S. intelligence agencies couldn't be trusted to tell you it was raining outside, Mr. Greenwald's "evidence" is irrefutable and taken as fact as a matter of faith.

Yeah, it's pretty stupid.

Anyway, the version of the story being told, starting with CNN getting the document from the CIA and somehow convincing Buzzfeed to do the dirty deed, is so full of ignorance of the facts it isn't even funny.  Samantha Bee got closer to them than any one story has so far.

But let us all say:  Thank the Lords and the low creatures for the Beeb.

First, the idea these documents were released by the CIA moments before CNN convinced Buzzfeed to publish them:

BBC News correspondent Paul Wood said he understood Mr Steele left his home on either Tuesday or Wednesday, before he was publicly named, and was now "in hiding".

He said he had been told Mr Steele, a father of four, had asked his neighbour to look after his three cats.

Our correspondent said he had been shown the memos about Mr Trump in October last year, when he was told Mr Steele was "in fear of his life", having spoken out about potential Russian involvement in Mr Trump's election.

He said he had been told by members of the intelligence community that Mr Steele was "extremely highly regarded" and was thought of as "competent".
....
The central allegation made in the memos was that Mr Trump was "vulnerable to blackmail", he added.

Which is really the question:  how vulnerable is Trump to blackmail?  One can't imagine this story having any credibility if it involved Obama, or even George W. Bush (well, maybe in his drinking days, but not afterwards).  But Trump?  All to easy to imagine it's true, even if it is all fictional.  None of which even gets to the question of Trump's financial connections to Russia.  He says he has none; he refuses to release any documents proving that statement.  So why should we believe him, especially with the Presidency literally at stake?

Of course, these reports may be false,  despite the background information on Mr. Steele:

As a member of MI6, he had been posted to the UK's embassy in Moscow and now runs a consultancy giving advice on doing business in Russia. He spoke to a number of his old contacts in the FSB, the successor to the KGB, paying some of them for information.

They told him that Mr Trump had been filmed with a group of prostitutes in the presidential suite of Moscow's Ritz-Carlton hotel.

I know this because the Washington political research company that commissioned his report showed it to me during the final week of the election campaign.

The BBC decided not to use it then, for the very good reason that without seeing the tape - if it exists - we could not know if the claims were true. The detail of the allegations were certainly lurid.
Well, the sex ones were lurid; the financial ones were so dull they're already disappearing down the memory hole.

And once more, with feeling:

The 35-page dossier on Mr Trump - which is believed to have been commissioned initially by Republicans opposed to Mr Trump - has been circulating in Washington for some time.

Media organisations, uncertain of its credibility, initially held back from publication. However, the entire series of reports has now been posted online, with Mr Steele named as the author.

Intelligence agencies considered the claims relevant enough to brief both Mr Trump and President Obama last week.
The first sentence is the best part, but we can do a bit better than that:

The opposition research firm that commissioned the report had worked first for an anti-Trump superpac - political action committee - during the Republican primaries.

Then during the general election, it was funded by an anonymous Democratic Party supporter. But these are not political hacks - their usual line of work is country analysis and commercial risk assessment, similar to the former MI6 agent's consultancy. He, apparently, gave his dossier to the FBI against the firm's advice.
But then we really go down the rabbit hole:

And the former MI6 agent is not the only source for the claim about Russian kompromat on the president-elect. Back in August, a retired spy told me he had been informed of its existence by "the head of an East European intelligence agency".

Later, I used an intermediary to pass some questions to active duty CIA officers dealing with the case file - they would not speak to me directly. I got a message back that there was "more than one tape", "audio and video", on "more than one date", in "more than one place" - in the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and also in St Petersburg - and that the material was "of a sexual nature".
So, to be clear, there is this set of documents Buzzfeed published; and then there is other information.  Apparently, a lot of it.  The sex allegations may be, as one CIA informant told the BBC, "Hokey as hell."  But then we have to follow the money:

But it is not just sex, it is money too. The former MI6 agent's report detailed alleged attempts by the Kremlin to offer Mr Trump lucrative "sweetheart deals" in Russia that would buy his loyalty.
Mr Trump turned these down, and indeed has done little real business in Russia. But a joint intelligence and law enforcement taskforce has been looking at allegations that the Kremlin paid money to his campaign through his associates.

On 15 October, the US secret intelligence court issued a warrant to investigate two Russian banks. This news was given to me by several sources and corroborated by someone I will identify only as a senior member of the US intelligence community. He would never volunteer anything - giving up classified information would be illegal - but he would confirm or deny what I had heard from other sources.
....
Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was - allegedly - a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.
It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States. The CIA cannot act domestically against American citizens so a joint counter-intelligence taskforce was created.

The taskforce included six agencies or departments of government. Dealing with the domestic, US, side of the inquiry, were the FBI, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Justice. For the foreign and intelligence aspects of the investigation, there were another three agencies: the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency, responsible for electronic spying.

Lawyers from the National Security Division in the Department of Justice then drew up an application. They took it to the secret US court that deals with intelligence, the Fisa court, named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks.

Their first application, in June, was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again. Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before election day.

I'm not a fan of FISA, but when you can get a judge to issue an order, there is something involved that isn't necessarily "Hokey as hell."  And when a taskforce of six agencies is at work, it takes quite a conspiracy theory to discredit what they are doing.

Does the tape exist?  Is the taskforce even still in existence?  We may never know, although Larry Flynt and Penthouse are offering 7 digit sums for the videotape.  That could be interesting.  Trump says:

Which isn't even a correct statement of what Clapper said.  Then again, what Trump said in that tweet above isn't correct either.  This document wasn't "leaked" because it was never classified; and it was never classified because it was never a government document.  It was oppo research commissioned during the primaries.  Which brings us to the interesting observation at the end of the BBC article:

In a New York Times op-ed in August, the former director of the CIA, Michael Morell, wrote: "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr Putin had recruited Mr Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

Agent; puppet - both terms imply some measure of influence or control by Moscow.

Michael Hayden, former head of both the CIA and the NSA, simply called Mr Trump a "polezni durak" - a useful fool.

The background to those statements was information held - at the time - within the intelligence community. Now all Americans have heard the claims. Little more than a week before his inauguration, they will have to decide if their president-elect really was being blackmailed by Moscow. 
Damn that Buzzfeed and their lack of journalistic ethics!

Adding:  since I wrote this (but before I published it) the discussion is already shifting to how this "secret" document was "leaked."  But of course, it was never a secret, not even an open one.  It was "secret" because it hadn't been published.  It wasn't "secret" because it was classified under U.S. or other applicable laws.

This is the root of conspiracy theories, especially theories about how "the media" hide information from "us."  If I don't know about it, it must be because it's being kept from me.  Well, in this case, it was; but in the name of journalistic ethics, not in the name of perfidy.

That Trump wants to use this to rail against the U.S. intelligence agencies again, and to turn to the verifications of Vladimir Putin, is what is really troubling here.

Paranoia strikes deep.
Posted by at 1 comment:

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Chasing the car, and catching the car


Yeah, how's that working out?

Rep. Todd Rokita, the vice chairman of the House Budget Committee, said he disagreed with analysis that repeal and replace had to be done simultaneously.

"I don't necessarily agree with that when there is a two-year transition to get off of this," Rokita told TPM. "Our job is going to have to be to decide what we are going to be replacing with and there are great plans out there already we just have to coalesce them into one package. The replacement has to come after the repeal from a process standpoint."

Rokita argued that President-elect Trump will have to go out and pressure Democrats to get on board.

"He's going to have to be in Senate Democrats' states pointing out that particular senator is the problem to the American people getting a better replacement. We are going to have a better replacement. It is going to be driven by consumer choices, not government choices," Rokita said.
You mean like this?







The "bully pulpit" doesn't mean act like a bully and call it gospel preaching.  Besides, when has healthcare or health insurance been driven by "consumer choices"?  Do you dicker in the ER over what care you will get, and what the supplies will cost?  Is not a health insurance policy practically the textbook example of an adhesion contract?  You'd have an easier time negotiating your cable package.

It's possible that in order to repeal all the parts of Obamacare or replace it, Republicans in the Senate would have to override the parliamentarian. Brady wouldn't comment on if that was still a possibility, only adding that they are having "lots of discussions."

"The Senate really drives the reconciliation with the Byrd rules. The House will continue to advance major reforms. The Senate, with the rules, have a tougher challenge," Brady told TPM.

Rokita also wouldn't weigh in on whether the Senate should just jam through a fuller repeal and override the parliamentarian.

"That is a discussion for a different day," Rokita said.
Rules, schmules.  And we don' need no steenken' badges!
Posted by at 1 comment:

This is what we're in for



In the summer of 2015, Macy’s cut ties with Trump in response to the offensive remarks the then-GOP presidential candidate had made about Mexicans. Trump and his followers launched a boycott. So, of course, the president-elect sees the company’s news in personal terms. 
So, if Macy's closes stores and eliminates jobs (more than 10,000, according to reports) that's a good thing, according to Trump?
"So there is a great spirit going on right now, a spirit that many people have told me they've never seen before, ever. We are going to create jobs, I said that I will be the greatest jobs producer that God ever created, and I mean that, I am going to work very hard on that. We need certain amounts of other things, including a little bit of luck, but I think we are going to do a real job, and I'm very proud of what we done and we haven't even gotten there yet."
Except for those jobs at Macy's.  Screw them!


This elevator goes all the way to the bottom, and doesn't seem to have any brakes.
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News You Can Use



I'm listening to an NPR program that pompously maintains Buzzfeed never should have published the 35 page document that is based on information gathered by a British operative with high credibility and good credentials who talked to a large number of people in gathering his information.

Most of it, according to an interview on the show, was given by multiple sources.  But still, it could be empty lies by Russian intelligence agents; on the other hand, what if it isn't?

Oh, forget it; there's a better report on this story in Ms. Bee's 6 minutes than I've found on the radio or the Internet.
Posted by at 2 comments:

The 'war on whites'

This painting is another story, but it fits in well here.

It's a compulsion, to report every small example of the "hidden wound" of American racism; especially since, for the next four years, it won't be hidden at all.   This comes from Charlie Pierce:

"It's really about political power and racial division and what I've referred to on occasion as the 'war on whites.' They are trying to motivate the African-American vote to vote-bloc for Democrats by using every 'Republican is a racist' tool that they can envision," the Republican congressman [Mo Brooks, Alabama] said on "The Morning Show With Toni & Gary" on WBHP 800 Alabama radio. "Even if they have to lie about it."

Yes, he was talking about the criticism of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, a man too racist to be a federal judge, but all cleaned up and de-spotted  (hem-hem) in time to be the Attorney General of the United States.  Rep. Brooks is in line to replace Sen. Sessions in the Senate, should the latter be confirmed.  At least the people of Alabama will notice no difference in the attitudes of their Senators about matters of race.

And I checked:  I'm younger than Jeff Sessions, but the same age as Lindsey Graham.  At the age of 62,  I thought I'd never hear this self-serving racist bullshit again:

Graham: I’m from South Carolina, so I know what it’s like sometimes to be accused of being a conservative from the South. That means something other than you’re a conservative from the South, and in your case people have fairly promptly tried to label you as a racist or a bigot or whatever you want to say. How does that make you feel? This is your chance to say something to those people.

Sessions: It does not feel good. … Senator Graham, I appreciate the question. You have a southern name, you come from south Alabama, that sounds worse to some people. When I came up as a U.S. attorney, I had no real support group, I didn’t prepare myself well in 1986 and there was an organized effort to caricature me as something that wasn’t true. It was very painful …
Oh, I'm sure you got over it.  As John Lewis said, during the same hearing:

It doesn’t matter whether Sen. Sessions may smile or how friendly he may be, whether he may speak to you. We need someone who will stand up and speak up and speak out for the people who need help, for people who are being discriminated against … We all live in the same house, the American house. We need someone as attorney general who is going to look out for all of us, not just some of us.
I hope that wasn't too painful for Jefferson Beauregard to hear.

Just remember, it's not about race, because it's never about race.
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Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Our Dear Leader

Any resemblance to the PEOTUS's first press conference is purely coincidental....

BBC World Service tells me the CIA (at least) has had the allegations about Trump's activities in Moscow (and the alleged videotapes, etc.) for at least a year, and considers the information "credible" enough to report it to the highest levels of security clearance, which I assume means at least the POTUS, but a rarified atmosphere of government officials, to say the least.

The CIA does not regard the allegations as proven, or true; but credible.   Credible enough that the most important people in government need to know about them.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Suddenly the emoluments clause of the Constitution is not the most important concern of this new Administration.  It's no longer a question of influence by way of payments; it's a question of influence by way of blackmail.

Consider how vehemently the President-Elect attacked the intelligence agencies of the United States government:

TRUMP: I think it was disgraceful — disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out. I think it’s a disgrace, and I say that — and I say that, and that’s something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do. I think it’s a disgrace that information that was false and fake and never happened got released to the public.

Because, after all, he and Putin see eye-to-eye:

TRUMP: Well, you know, President Putin and Russia put out a statement today that this fake news was indeed fake news. They said it totally never happened.

Now, somebody would say, “Oh, of course he’s gonna say that.”

I respected the fact that he said that.

And I — I’ll be honest, I think if he did have something, they would’ve released it; they would’ve been glad to release it.

So Vladimir Putin is someone we can all trust, but our own intelligence agencies might as well be working for Nazi Germany.   And really, why wouldn't Putin now release information he could use to blackmail Trump with later?

This is probably my favorite exchange in the press conference:

QUESTION: Would a reasonable observer say that you are potentially vulnerable to blackmail by Russia or by its intelligence agencies?

TRUMP: Lemme just tell you what I do.

When I leave our country, I’m a very high-profile person, would you say?

I am extremely careful. I’m surrounded by bodyguards. I’m surrounded by people.

And I always tell them — anywhere, but I always tell them if I’m leaving this country, “Be very careful, because in your hotel rooms and no matter where you go, you’re gonna probably have cameras.” I’m not referring just to Russia, but I would certainly put them in that category.

And number one, “I hope you’re gonna be good anyway. But in those rooms, you have cameras in the strangest places. Cameras that are so small with modern technology, you can’t see them and you won’t know. You better be careful, or you’ll be watching yourself on nightly television.”

I tell this to people all the time.

I was in Russia years ago, with the Miss Universe contest, which did very well — Moscow, the Moscow area did very, very well.

And I told many people, “Be careful, because you don’t wanna see yourself on television. Cameras all over the place.”

And again, not just Russia, all over.

Does anyone really believe that story?

I know what question he's asking; but the question applies to his answers, too.  Because you can't make this stuff up:  crime is bad, except when it's good:

But remember this: We talk about the hacking and hacking’s bad and it shouldn’t be done. But look at the things that were hacked, look at what was learned from that hacking.

That Hillary Clinton got the questions to the debate and didn’t report it? That’s a horrible thing. That’s a horrible thing.

Can you imagine that if Donald Trump got the questions to the debate — it would’ve been the biggest story in the history of stories. And they would’ve said immediately, “You have to get out of the race.” Nobody even talked about it. It’s a very terrible thing.

Yeah?
He's going to take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend what, now?

And frankly:  how sad is it that the PEOTUS needs a cheering section in order to hold a press conference?
Posted by at 2 comments:

Neither


It was said, in Jerry Falwell's lifetime, that the Moral Majority was neither.

Now it can be equally said of the "Religious Right."  They have sold their heritage for a mess of pottage.  They don't care about Donald Trump's morality; all they care about is what he will do for their power.

Jesus had a lot to say about people like that; none of it was good.
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Reliable Sources


And then:


Except, as his Twitter feed immediately noted:


Besides, this is why we need to see his tax returns and other financial documents.


Live by the fake news, die by the fake news.   What fake news?  Again, his Twitter feed is instructive:

 And in all this time we've yet to invoke Godwin's Law; why not now?


Which puts Trump squarely at war with the intelligence agencies that serve him.  As Josh Marshall observed on that point:

6. Some people are saying that we shouldn't be looking at these news reports through the prism of the credibility of the document but rather the intelligence community's retaliation or warning to Trump. I don't think we can rule that out. But as much as we may dislike Trump, intelligence agencies using the information they gather against an elected President is a very bad thing. We shouldn't lose sight of that. Of course, we should also not expect our spy apparatus to cover for presidential wrongdoing or leave the country vulnerable to foreign subversion. Regardless this is extreme high-wire behavior for the whole country, whatever the underlying facts. It's bad from every different direction that we're here.
Yup.  And we're back to this issue, which Trump could clear up, but odds are he won't:

7. A lot of the information in this document matches up pretty well with circumstantial evidence about Trump's business dealings with Russian oligarchs and organized crime, and the leverage they have over him.
And the governments of the world pay careful attention to all of this, taking note of how Trump responds to it.  As for the government of the United States:  Trump has an approval rating of 37% 10 days out from his inauguration.  His approval rating has declined since the election.  That's being noticed, too.

I mean, what is this, Nazi Germany?
Posted by at 1 comment:

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

The Fire Next Time


Trump's response to this news story:

Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.

The classified briefings last week were presented by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs -- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.
No, we don't have the information the intelligence agencies have; but if those four gentlemen are convinced enough to brief the POTUS and the PEOTUS on the issue, I think it's safe to assume the evidence is at least strong.

And as for the "political witch hunt":  against whom?  Putin?  Russian intelligence?

It gets worse;  Buzzfeed published documents it said it could not verify, and noted errors in them, but "so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government" they released them anyway.  Which, of course, Trump had to respond to:


Maybe the documents are fake; that's why the intelligence agencies are investigating them.  At this point, however, they are merely unverified; they are hardly unverifiable.  And the problem is not the documents, but what the documents allegedly contain:

The memos describe sex videos involving prostitutes with Mr. Trump in a 2013 visit to a Moscow hotel. The videos were supposedly prepared as “kompromat,” or compromising material, with the possible goal of blackmailing Mr. Trump in the future.

The memos also suggest that Russian officials proposed various lucrative deals, essentially as disguised bribes in order to win influence over Mr. Trump.

The memos describe several purported meetings during the 2016 presidential campaign between Trump representatives and Russian officials to discuss matters of mutual interest, including the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta.
I'm not saying any of that is true; I'm just saying Trump really knows how to throw kerosene on a fire.

And that Russia, and several other countries, are taking notes as fast as they can scribble.
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Because poets matter too....



"For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth."
--W.H. Auden

My daughter went to San Francisco for Christmas.  She wanted to bring me something, and go somewhere in the city important to me.  She visited City Lights Bookstore, and brought me a book of Ferlinghetti's poems published by City Lights.  The book is San Francisco Poems, published on the occasion of Ferlinghetti being named the first Poet Laureate of San Francisco in 1998.  So the book opens, not with a poem, but with the poet's Inaugural Address upon the occasion:

I certainly was surprised to be named Poet Laureate of this far-out city on the left side of the world, and I gratefully accept, for as I told the Mayor, "How could I refuse?"  I'd rather be Poet Laureate of San Francisco than anywhere because this city has always been a poetic center, a frontier for free poetic life, with perhaps more poets and more poetry readers than any city in the world.

But we are in danger of losing it.  In fact, we are in danger of losing much more than that.  All that made this City so unique in the first place seems to be going down the tube at an alarming rate.

This week's Bay Guardian has the results of a survey that "reveals a city undergoing a radical transformation--from a diverse metropolis that welcomes immigrants and refugees from around the world to a homogenous, wealthy enclave."

The gap between the rich and the poor in San Francisco increased more than forty percent in just two years recently.  "San Francisco may soon become the first fully gentrified city in America, the urban equivalent of a gated bedroom community," says Daniel Zoll in the Guardian.  "Now it's becoming almost impossible for a lot of the people who have made this a world-class city--people who have been the heart and soul of the city for decades--from the fishers and pasta makers and blue-collar workers to the jazz musicians to the beat poets to the hippies to the punks and so many others--to exist here anymore.  And when you've lost that part of the city, you've lost San Francisco."

And Richard Walker, head of geography at UC Berkeley has said, "It means a one-dimensional city, a more conservative city--one that will no longer be a fount of social innovation and rebellion from below.  Just another American city, a corporate city--a fate it has resisted for generations."

Resistance is futile.

The poet puts his finger on the problem, and even the irony of a city named for a famous saint whom nobody thinks of in connection with that city:

And for another destroyer of poetry and peace, how about this killing machines, the Navy's Blue Angels, who have just carried out their annual attack on the City?  But the poetic life requires Peace, not War.  The poetic life of the City, our subjective, life, the subjective life the individual, is constantly under attack by all the forces of materialist civilization, by all the forces of our military-industrial perplex, and we don't need those warplanes designed to kill and ludicrously misnamed the Blue Angels.  They dive upon our city every year, in a frightening militarist and nationalist display of pure male testosterone.  I've seen old Vietnam ladies in Washington Square diving under the benches!  Do we really need to be reminded yearly how our places have bombed Third World countries back to the Stone Age?  In San Francisco, of all places, do we really need "bombs bursting in air to prove that our flag is still there"?  What would Saint Francis say?  Perhaps the City could disinvite them next year.

That was October, 1998.  By 2001, the date of the publication of the book, things hadn't much improved:

The painter who thought he was Stephan Dedalus in James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man setting forth to articulate the uncreated conscience of his race, saw San Francisco for the first time from the deck of an Oakland ferry some fifty years ago.
...
He walked and walked that day, and got the impression that the natives had a kind of island mentality, considering themselves San Franciscans first, on an island which wasn't necessarily a part of the United States.  He felt right at home from the first.  It seemed as ideal as any city could be for an artist or writer, perhaps like Athens at the height of Greek culture, or Dublin at the time of the Irish Renaissance--a city small enough for human conviviality and large enough for intense creative ferment, with a metropolitan sensibility.
....
Fifty years later, he awoke one fine morning like Rip Van Winkle and found himself again with his sea bag on his shoulder, looking for anywhere he could live and work.  The new owners of his old flat now wanted $2500 a month, and his studio was $3000 plus.  Many of his friends were also evicted, for it seemed their buildings weren't owned by San Franciscans anymore but by faceless investors with venture capital.  Corporate monoculture had wiped out any unique sense of place, turning the "island-city" into an artistic theme-park, without artists.  And he was on the street.

It's worth noting my daughter visited many of the "tourist spots" of the City, but she preferred the non-tourist parts of the town she stumbled upon.  And she also found it a terribly, terribly expensive place to even visit.  Although she found a great sign over the entry into City Lights.  I can't share the picture with you, but I can share the sentiment:

"Abandon all despair, you who enter here."

Good words to start the year with.
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