via It’s Monday
-
WORLD
- There are mass rallies in Lebanon that have been going on since October 17. The protesters are demanding a “complete overhaul of a political system deemed inefficient and corrupt.” One of the protesters is quoted as saying: “They think we are playing here.” (Yahoo News)
- Iraqi security forces have opened fire on protesters in fatal clashes in Baghdad (The Guardian).
- Hong Kong protests continue.
- More than a year after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, critics of bin Salman continue to be arbitrarily detained. (Guardian)
CRIME AND LAW
. Oklahoma has the distinction of being the state with the highest incarceration rate in the U.S. But, Oklahoma is commuting prison sentences for around 500 inmates. These are people serving sentences for low-level drug and nonviolent offenses.
- White House officials again refuse to show up for closed-door hearings on Capital Hill. Democrats wring their hands and say that it will be used an evidence of obstruction.
POLITICS
- Katie Hill (unfairly hounded out of the Congress) tweets that she hopes we elect a woman president in 2020. A woman, any woman? This is supposed to be progress?
THE TRUMP TRANSNATIONAL CRIME FAMILY
The New York Times is reporting that in 2018, Ukraine’s chief prosecutor froze four cases that were being pursued which involved Paul Manafort. It is highly likely that this was part of another deal between Ukraine and the Trump Crime Family.
(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/world/europe/ukraine-mueller-manafort-missiles.html?module=inline)
- The decision to halt the investigations came as the Trump administration was “finalizing plans to sell…anti-tank missiles, called Javelins” to Ukraine.
- “The Ukrainian investigators had been tracing money paid to Mr. Manafort and a New York law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, by figures in the political party of Viktor F. Yanukovych.”
- The investigations were not closed, but an order blocked issuing subpoenas for evidence or interviewing witnesses.
- One case involved a payment of $750,000 to Manafort from a Ukrainian shell company, being investigated as money laundering. This payment was part the multimillion dollar transfers to Manafort from politicians in Ukraine that underpin indictments filed by Mueller. Before the case was frozen, prosecutors had subpoenaed records from Ukrainian banks.
- A second case concerned a former chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s foreign relations committee, Vitaly Kalyuzhny, who had signed nine of 22 entries designated for Manafort in a secret ledger of political payoffs uncovered after the 2014 revolution. The ledger showed payouts totaling $12.5 million for Manafort.
- The handwritten accounting document, called in Ukraine the Black Ledger, formed an evidential linchpin for investigating corruption in the former government. Manafort denied receiving under-the-table payments from the party and his spokesman claimed the ledger might be a forgery.
- The other two cases looked at Skadden Arps, which wrote a report with Manafort’s participation that was widely seen as whitewashing the politically motivated arrest and imprisonment of Mr. Yanukovych’s principal rival, Yulia V. Tymoshenko.
- Two months before Ukraine’s government froze the cases, Horbatyuk reached out to Mueller’s office with a formal offer to cooperate by sharing evidence and leads. Horbatyuk (of the Prosecutor General’s office) said that he sent a letter in January and did not receive a reply, but that the offer was now moot, since he has lost the authority to investigate.
- Entries in the ledger appear to bolster Mueller’s money laundering and tax evasion case against Manafort, said Serhiy Leshchenko, a lawmaker who has closely followed the investigation. They indicate, for example, payments from Ukraine to a Cypriot company, Global Highway Limited, that was also named in an indictment Mueller filed in federal court in Virginia this year. The company covered hundreds of thousands of dollars of Manafort’s bills at a high-end men’s clothing store and antique shop in New York.•
- In another move seeming to hinder Mueller’s investigation, Ukrainian law enforcement allowed a potential witness to possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to leave for Russia, putting him out of reach for questioning.
- The special counsel’s office has identified the man, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, Manafort’s former office manager in Kiev, as tied to a Russian intelligence agency. Kilimnik was also under investigation in Ukraine over espionage, but no charges were filed before he left the country, sometime after June. During the 2016 campaign, Kilimnik met twice with Manafort. In December, a court filing in the United States said Mr. Kilimnik was “currently based in Russia.”
- But in the United States, Mueller’s office appears still keenly interested in Manafort’s ties to Russia. Among the questions Mueller would like to ask Mr. Trump, according to a list provided to the president’s lawyers, was: “What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?”
- In Kiev, the missile sale was seen as a political victory for Poroshenko, indicating American backing for his government in the war in eastern Ukraine against Russia-backed separatists and against the threat of a wider Russian intervention in the country. After Ukraine announced on April 30 that it had received the missiles, Poroshenko posted on Facebook that “the long-awaited weapon arrived in the Ukrainian Army.”
- Apart from the missiles, the Ukrainian government is propped up with about $600 million in bilateral aid from the United States annually.
- David Sakvarelidze, a former deputy prosecutor general who is now in the political opposition, said he did not believe that the general prosecutor had coordinated with anybody in the United States on the decision to suspend the investigations in Ukraine, or that there had been a quid pro quo for the missile sale.•
- Ukrainian politicians, he said, concluded on their own that any help prosecuting Manafort could bring down Mr. Trump’s wrath.
- “Can you imagine,” Sakvarelidze said, “that Trump writes on Twitter, ‘The United States isn’t going to support any corrupt post-Soviet leaders, including in Ukraine.’ That would be the end of him.”
- Last summer, another member of Parliament, Andrey L. Derkach, initiated an investigation into leaks to the news media about Manafort’s dealings from Ukrainian law enforcement, saying they put at risk vital American aid to Ukraine. He has openly opposed any Ukrainian role in aiding the special counsel’s investigation.
- Ukraine, Mr. Derkach said in an interview, would be taking grave risks if it assisted in what he called a politicized investigation in the United States. In Ukraine, he said, “everybody is afraid of this case.”
-
The past week has convinced me once again that the corporate media is worse than useless. The only reason for watching CNN and MSNBC is to collect examples of outrageous normalizing and insider smugness, examples of how the corporate media has sold us out, is selling us out and will get Trump re-elected.
The Joe Scarborough and dreadful Mika lecture about booing Donald Trump just did it for me. I cannot watch anymore, not even to record the media’s subversive ushering-in of the take over of democracy by authoritarianism.
But, like a partner in a bad relationship, I thought I’d listen to Ari Melber, for a minute, while I looked for my copy of Elmer Gantry. I was so wrong to do this.
When my television records a program, it starts early, so I must watch at least a few minutes of the amazingly obnoxious, arrogant and over-rated Chuck Todd.
There he was with one of my least favorite people in the world, Adrienne Elrod, one of the Clinton entitled jerk women (like Neera Tandem). These women helped lose the 2016 election for the Democrats but will never, never forgive Bernie Sanders for exercising his political right to run for election. They are bitter, nasty and never pass up an opportunity to trash Sanders.
The panel was talking about Joe Manchin’s decision to give an interview to Fox News in which he announced that if Bernie Sanders was the Democratic candidate, he would vote for Trump. This video clip just made me sick and enraged me. Joe Manchin is such a disgrace to the Democratic party. Why they support him I don’t know. He votes with the Republicans but still the leadership protects him. Why would we want this jerk?
I phoned Manchin’s office earlier in the day to express my outrage that he had made such an announcement. The staffer who took my call, said with obvious contemptuous disdain at the end of the call: “Have a nice day.” “Oh you too.” I answered back. “You should be ashamed to work for this man.”
Elrod, however, predictably pronounced that Manchin’s statement that he would VOTE FOR A REPUBLICAN CRIMINAL AND MADMAN over Bernie Sanders wasn’t a problem at all. If anyone in the party had said that they would vote for Trump over Clinton, people like the dreadful Adrienne Elrod would have been all over television talking party treason and accusing them of sexism. Why these programs continue to have her on just escapes me. They do a story about Bernie Sanders and then have ADRIENNE ELROD on to comment on it, or Neera F…ing Tandem. Jesus.
Then, after Elrod was finished saying that Manchin’s statement really wasn’t a problem, this other guest – a smirking, arrogant somebody said that “everyone in Washington” understood Manchin as a Democrat from West Virginia and that only Bernie would have called Manchin on his statement. The panel nodded their heads.
It is the contempt, the insider smirk, the “real players understand that you always sell your soul for political advantage” people that just make me sick. I hate their satisfaction, their smug confidence that the real players all understand that this is just a game for power and they laugh at the rest of us who take it seriously, have to take it seriously because it means our lives.
I don’t know who this guy is. But, after he said that Bernie was the only rube who would be so unsophisticated not to know that real cool people sell their souls every day, he said that Bernie should have just been quiet for the “good of the party.”
What? What?
Joe F…ing Manchin should be quiet for the good of the party and not make a public statement (on Fox News) that he will VOTE FOR A REPUBLICAN MEMBER OF AN INTERNATIONAL CRIME SYNDICATE rather than vote for Bernie Sanders, the Democratic nominee.
Joe Manchin makes a cynical, self-interested statement that he would rather support a man who doesn’t believe in democracy rather than his party’s supposed candidate and they are blaming Bernie? Bernie should just be quiet?
But, the arrogant F… and Chuck Todd bent over laughing at the idiocy of Sanders calling Manchin out. To them it is laughable idiocy to believe in integrity, in morals. They are what we need to get rid of – people who think selling their souls is such an ever day occurrence that they think the rest of us are stupid for objecting.
-
“Have we celebrated 220 years of our Constitution to reach a point where, like a banana republic, our highest elected leaders can engage in crimes of illegal surveillance, lying to take the nation into war, torture, disappearance and degradation with impunity?” (xi)
-
Elizabeth Holtzman has been on many corporate news programs over the past year commenting on the Trump Administration. She was on the House Judiciary Committee investigating Watergate.
The real shame, however, is that I have not heard a single corporate news host interview her on her important and relevant book “Cheating Justice” that came out in 2012.
Holtzman details in her book the way in which George W. Bush and Dick Cheney not only broke the law and lied us into a war, but took pains to manipulate the legal system so they couldn’t be held accountable afterward for their crimes.
If the corporate media could stop for five minutes getting every living soul in Washington to comment on the minutia of testimony by witnesses to a crime that White House has already admitted, we might learn how players like Bill Barr are manipulating behind the scenes to make it impossible to hold Trump accountable either.
George W. Bush is now considered by many as a harmless little guy you share a box with at a baseball game. But, he lied us into a war, unnecessarily, a war that had grave consequences for this country and the Middle East.
But, as Holtzman notes:
“The former president had no apologies for starting a war in Iraq that had taken the lives of thousands and ruined many more: he thought the world was better off for it, even though no weapons of mass destruction, his ostensible reason for the war, were found in Iraq.”
This book is a great read and an important document for understanding what the Justice Department is most likely doing behind our backs.
-
It’s been a bad few days, a shocking few days, a disorienting few days.
First, late last week, the story broke that Bill Barr had launched a criminal investigation into the 2016 FBI probe of Russian attacks on the election. In doing so, the Justice Department became an authoritarian enforcement arm for the White House. The clear purpose of this criminal inquiry is to harass and punish people in the FBI and the intelligence communities who dared to investigate a transnational criminal who was running for, and then became president, Donald Trump.
But, no sooner had the story broken than the corporate news normalizers (Chuck Rosenberg, et. al.) hit the air waves to tell us that this wasn’t what it was – the use of the Justice Department to prosecute Trump’s enemies.
“It’s only a diversion from the impeachment inquiry,” we were told. “Barr’s co-conspirator John Durham is a man of integrity, an adult in the room. He would never be involved with anything improper.” “The investigation is going nowhere.” “They haven’t even said what crime they were investigating.” “Let’s wait and see what they come up with.”
There’s a fundamental kind of disorientation you experience when what is right in front of your eyes is denied by others looking at the same thing. I am used to it from the corporate media, but the past few days have just been crazy-making.
Sunday morning, I turned on the television and before I had a chance to take the first sip of coffee, I was confronted with Donald Trump’s ugly face staring out of the television screen, making some sort of announcement. I felt like the deer in the headlights. My partner and I sat propped up in bed, speechless, and listening first to a dead-toned reading of a prepared statement about Bathdadi’s death and then to a totally unhinged Trump wet dream about the actual killing.
When Trump talks about violence he does so with relish. He draws out the phrases and words almost as if he were tasting them on his tongue. Sunday, he was visibly savoring the details of Baghdadi’s death. He was enjoying the video of the man’s humiliation, his crying, his whimpering, his terror.
I have listened to Trump enough to know when he’s pulling shit out of his ass. I knew even then he was making this up. What we were listening to was a violent wet dream inside the diseased head of a man who controls the nuclear codes. I felt nauseous.
Donald Trump’s brain is filled with sick-making fantasies. Some of these fantasies are of the terrorizing, humiliation and utter destruction – in slow motion and in technicolor – of his enemies. What we were listening to Sunday morning was what he would like to do to anyone who opposes him. What we were listening to was what he would do to anyone who opposes him if he thought he could get away with it. What we were listening to was what he will do to anyone who opposes him if we don’t stop him.
By the time Trump finished and I got to the study to turn on the computer, the corporate media was doing its job.
I sat and stared with disbelief into the face of a young woman reporter who had listened to the same public statement I had. “Trump” she said “is a vivid storyteller.” He has an “unconventional style.”
What the corporate media then did throughout the day was transform an obscene display of crassness, mental illness and sadism into a question of style. Donald Trump is not a vivid storyteller. Donald Trump is not unconventional. Donald Trump is a madman.
I tried to spend most of the day dealing with cats, Naan, and working on a seminar about the 1960 film, Elmer Gantry.
Monday morning, I hadn’t even turned on the television when my Twitter feed went wild. Reaching over to get the Mini, I read a stream of comments that made me groan out loud.
The two worst people in the entire world (Joe Scarborough and the dreadful Mika) were evidently on air lecturing the rest of us and calling us “unAmerican” for booing Donald Trump and chanting “lock him up” at a ball game. These two narcissistic, self-promoting, vacuous and disgusting examples of what this society has become had the audacity to scold and shame American citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights.
These two people helped get Trump elected by giving him millions in free air time. Trump himself referred to them as his “supporters.” They got his permission before they asked him difficult questions in an interview, and they were partying at Mar-a-Lago after the election. They saw themselves in the White House. Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski turned on Trump only after he threatened to (and eventually did) out their adulterous affair.
Morning Joe is usually good fodder and provides such delicious examples of wretched corporate media coverage (not to mention obsequious butt kissing from the panel), but I couldn’t even turn on the television. I knew I would throw something and I enjoy that television.
By mid-morning my Twitter feed was telling me that the most hypocritical, sanctimonious and compromised of all Democrats, Chris Coons, had joined the Joe and Mika team admonishing Americans for spontaneous political expression. Coons, while presenting himself as being “bi-partisan” and oh such a good guy, helped arrange a sham “investigation” of Bret Kavnaugh that helped him get to the Supreme Court.
The one true point of all this is that the Club of Elites (including the corporate media and the political establishment) wants to handle the Trump fiasco itself. They do not want the American people empowered. They do not want legitimate outrage, protests, boos, chants, action. They are terrified that people in this country might realize they have the power to throw the bastards out whenever they choose to. They are terrified that people might realize that they have the power to provide themselves with adequate health care, good public schools, living wages and jobs, a fair criminal justice system. They have the power to demand that the white collar, corporate and political criminals be put under the goddamn jail for their blatant thievery and gutting of the American economy.
The sheer fact of the matter is that the Joe Scarboroughs, Mika Brzezinski’s, the Chris Coons, the Nancy Pelosis, the Ellens, the Danny Deutschs of the world have more in common with each other than they do with us.
They want Trump out because he’s upsetting the game, but they want to handle it themselves. That way, the polite in-house corruption, cheating, self-dealing and graft can continue.
The corporate media is not even remotely on our side. They will debate minutiae, trivialize political division, suppress radical expression, flood the air waves with normalizers. They will never, unless they are forced to by the American people, admit that what we are experiencing is a disaster, a terrifying crisis, the transformation of a once proud democratic country into an authoritarian state. For as long as they can get away with it, they will tell us to “move along.” “Don’t freak out.” Go enjoy yourselves, look the other way.
We must not let them get away with it.
-
Yesterday, I spent hours reading about William Barr launching a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. What struck me most forcefully was the repeated dismissal of the action by various corporate media commentators.
There is a squad of normalizers out there in the corporate news world, working overtime to convince us that we are not seeing what is right before our eyes, an authoritarian take-over of the state.
The attitude was, “Oh well, this is just a distraction.” “Don’t worry, there’s nothing there.” “They don’t even know what they’re investigating.” “The prosecutor (Durham from Connecticut) is a fine man.” “Who could imagine that such a fine man would be participating in anything nefarious.”
The Attorney General of the United States has launched a criminal investigation into the Justice Department’s own Russia investigation. The effect of this investigation will be to harass, to target, and to punish members of the intelligence community and the FBI who dared, dared to follow up credible leads that the Trump Campaign was consorting with Russians in order to steal an election.
As David Lohfman, head of the counterintelligence section at Justice at the time stated Thursday night on Rachael Maddow, “We would have been derelict” had an investigation not been initiated.
But the Attorney General is now using a criminal investigation to punish and silence anyone who participated in this lawful investigation. And, the normalizers tell us that there’s nothing to see here.
They are tying themselves in knots trying to dismiss what has happened. It reminds me of a Time Magazine cover during Watergate where all the principles were surrounded by audio tape, desperately pointing at each other.
The normalizers shout that what Barr is doing is merely a “distraction.”
But it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if it is. It doesn’t make any difference at all why Barr is pursuing this investigation. Once the Justice Department becomes an enforcement tool of the White House you have authoritarianism.
The corporate media refuses, refuses to state what is obvious to anyone who has eyes and ears. Instead, they work overtime to bring on the appeasers to tell us that what we are seeing are “stunts” “empty gestures,” nothing to worry about.
I read a tweet from somebody yesterday wondering if the corporate media would have normalized the rise of Mussolini. I think most definitely so.
I had barely stumbled into my study this morning and turned on the computer before I was confronted with Greg Sargent in the Washington Post making his contribution to the to the normalizing.
Under the headline “Explosive William Barr news points to Trump’s weakness and panic.” (WP 10/25/19), Sargent beings his article with the sentence: “Don’t freak out.” What? We’re not supposed to “freak out” over explosive news?
Sargent proceeds to call Barr’s investigation “deeply worrying” a standard utterance widely used yesterday along with “concerning.” (Concern used to be a noun.)
Then Sargent tells his readers that even though “when we’re talking about Barr, the most nefarious designs imaginable must be treated as a serious possibility,” it’s possible “POSSIBLE” that Barr’s actions are NOT SERIOUS. Well, hell, it’s POSSIBLE that my head is going to fly off into the goddamn air and become a spotted calf, but I’m not going to waste time talking about it, especially not in the goddamn Washington Post.
Sargent, evidently realizing the utter imbecility of his case, drags in the help of the New York Times, saying that the Times comments that Barr’s actions may “raise alarms” that Trump “is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies.” May?
Both corporate news outlets refrain from saying what is obvious, that Trump and Barr ARE using the Justice Department go to after enemies. No, The Washington Post and the New York Times must phrase it differently. According to them, Barr’s actions MAY “raise alarms” that this is happening. They don’t say this IS happening, or that we SHOULD BE alarmed, what they say (in all the courage of their convictions) is that these things might be happening, and might raise the alarms of a certain unidentified group of people that it might be happening.
Sargent goes on to state that it is “at least possible” that Barr turning the Justice Department into an enforcement branch to silence Trump’s detractors isn’t “quite as serious as it seems.” I suppose in some goddamn fictional world, that it’s possible that it’s not as serious as it seems, but I don’t know where that is. In the world I inhabit, it is serious, goddamn serious. It is using the investigative branch of the government in a blatant action to silence the President’s enemies.
Sargant says it’s POSSIBLE that it’s not as serious as it seems because the investigation might just be an attempt to calm the president.
Following this logic, it’s O.K. if the Justice Department is pursuing bogus criminal investigations if it’s just to calm the president. WHAT MAKES THAT O.K.? IN WHAT WORLD IS THAT ALRIGHT?
Sargent sees it as reassuring that neither the Times nor the Post are “clear what potential crime Durham and Barr are investigating.” No, that’s not reassuring. That makes it even more terrifying. The very fact that Barr managed to initiate a criminal investigation based on NOTHING, should be terrifying, not reassuring.
Sargent drags the Cato Institute in and uses them to say that the criminal matter “could be something relatively less serious” say a leak from the Russia probe. Again, this is supposed to make us feel better? The Justice Department intends to drag government officials who were doing their jobs through years of investigation and possible prosecution, but if it’s for something relatively minor, we’re supposed to feel better?
Sargent then adopts the Barbara McQuade idiotic statement of the day from yesterday, that this is merely a diversion from the impeachment probe. Whether or not it is a diversion from the impeachment probe it is a criminal prosecution trumped up for no reason, to uncover no known crime which will chill investigations in the future.
Again, this is said as if since the criminal investigation is a diversion, we should all relax and move on. I just don’t understand that.
After repeating McQuade’s ludicrous utterance, Sargent then manages to try to tie himself up in knots by stating: “I’m not saying Barr’s machinations aren’t deeply dangerous. They absolutely are.”
Then why has he has just spent an entire article telling us why they AREN’T deeply dangerous?
“Given Barr’s apparent willingness to place law enforcement at Trump’s political disposal, it’s very possible Barr’s designs are maximally nefarious. But one can also imagine the criminal probe is of some intermediate matter.”
What “intermediate matter?” What difference does that make?
The very fact that Barr has managed to open this criminal investigation is the point. What he intends to do, what crime he is targeting (if any), whether the investigation will “go anywhere” is not the goddamn point.
Barr’s Justice Department tried to keep Trump’s Ukraine plot buried by advising against the transmission of the whistleblower complaint about it to Congress, and by successfully declining to investigate the referral within the Justice Department. He has now successfully launched a criminal investigation targeting Trump’s foes. This is serious. Any attempt to portray it as otherwise is deeply subversive, that includes opinion pieces from the Washington Post.
I’m beginning to believe that the corporate media is more dangerous than Trump and to borrow a phrase from ancient Rome about Crassus, William Barr is the most dangerous bull in the heard.
-
- The Bill Barr’s DOJ has initiated a criminal investigation into its own Russia investigation, clearly sending a message that there is reason to believe crimes were committed when the original investigation of the Russia connection was started.
- This is exactly what Trump promised Hillary Clinton he would do, i.e., start criminal investigation and prosecution of his political enemies.
- But, the usual corporate news media “our institutions will hold” chorus shrugs it off.
- Barbara McCabe said it’s a “distraction” from the impeachment inquiry, a stunt.
- Several commentators (including Sean Patrick Maloney, D-NY) dismissed the inquiry in interviews by saying who cares, there’s nothing to find. Chuck Rosenberg, interviewed on Rachael Maddow, said: “I have a feeling that this is going nowhere.”
- In taking this position, these pundits ignore (n tot for the first time) the clear fact that this is a serious step towards authoritarianism.
- The chorus of “our institutions will save us” commentators, including chief normalizer Chuck Rosenberg, are praising John Durham, Barr’s co-conspirator who is traveling the world trying not to “find evidence” as corporate media pundits describe it, but to find people who will manufacture evidence to fit their investigation.
- In an interview Thursday night on Rachael Maddow, Rosenberg said of Durham: “I know, I like, and I admire John Durham. I trust him.”
- You will remember that Rosenberg (whose podcast MSNBC advertises) also said that William Barr was an institutionalist, implying that Barr would never allow partisan politics to enter the hallowed halls of the Justice Department.
- He was outrageously wrong then and he is wrong now.
- Rosenberg pointed out that perhaps there were “discordant” notes sounded by the initiation of a criminal investigation. Dear, dear, discordant notes.
- Rosenberg continued that if we want John Durham to “get to the bottom of this” we should welcome a grand jury. So, according to the “institutionalist chorus” we should just shrug our shoulders and wait and see. Just like they advised us to do with Barr.
- “John,” Rosenberg stressed to reassure, “needs some factual basis in order to open a grand jury.” When Maddow pointed out that Bill Barr was the official deciding what “factual basis” met the threshold, Rosenberg had no answer. But, his faith in the integrity of the Justice Department was still there.
- Mine is not.
- In a ridiculously contradictory set of statements, Rosenberg pointed out that he worried about the “chilling effect” that the initiation of such an investigation would have. But, Durham, he said, was “a credible prosecutor.”
- Interestingly, Rosenberg noted that Durham “has been asked to do things like this before and…has closed…investigations after several years without bringing charges.”
- That makes Durham the perfect stooge to investigate, feed into the Republican narrative that it was the Trump Campaign that was wronged in the 2016 election, and then after two years of harassment, quietly drop the investigation.
- Later in Thursday night’s Rachael Maddow show, David Lohfman, former head of the counterintelligence section inside the Justice Department said, “I have high regard for John Durham.” He is “a distinguished prosecutor.” “It’s hard for me to imagine that John Durham would associate himself with the frivolous initiation of a criminal investigation.”
- But, then a few seconds later, Lohfman noted that the people in the Justice department would have been “derelict if we had not pursued that line of investigation.” They would have been derelict not to pursue it, therefore there was no question in his mind that the investigation was appropriate. But, the “distinguished prosecutor” is perfectly reasonable to lend his credibility to the initiation of an investigation that clearly targets those who started the initial investigation. There are no people of courage any more.
- Lohfman ended the interview by saying: “I have every confidence that John Durham will withstand any pressures that may buffet him to go down a road that he thinks is not supported by the facts and law.” But, he has just done that by joining this new criminal investigation.
- If the investigation is unwarranted, and also will contribute to chilling future investigations, why didn’t Durham if he is such a hero, refuse to take part in it.
- The job of a prosecutor is not to expend taxpayer money and harass people pursuing frivolous investigations when s/he thinks there’s nothing there. That is an abuse of office.
- But none of the “our institutions will save us” chorus will say that. No, they just assure us that Bill Barr or Durham are great people of integrity.
- Let’s not take too seriously the initiation of a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s political opponents. The institutions will save us.
- I agree with people who have argued that Bill Barr is the most dangerous bull in the heard. He must be impeached, now.
-
Rachael Maddow said tonight that she feels there is something different going on; that a corner has been turned. I feel the same way although I can’t explain why.
I have watched many Trump rallies, all the way through and taken notes, but tonight, I watched a murderous thug of a moron scream lies at other morons who were wildly cheering the lies he was screaming at them. The man, the moron, has been allowed to displace 160,000 human beings and provoke the murder of countless men and women who used to be our allies.
This must be the way it felt in Germany to stand and watch and listen to obscenity, unbelievable obscenity being swallowed whole by people who could be your neighbors. It must be what it was like watching lunacy gathering steam, plowing ahead, taking over.
It is like being in an earthquake. The thing you depend on, the ground, is moving underneath you and you are completely disoriented. In this case, the thing that I value and depend on most in the world, logic, reason, truth is moving underneath me. The culture is being taken over by lies and deception, sham truth, blatant illogic and the people who have assumed authority are saying “get used to it.”
Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel entitled “It Can’t Happen Here.” Well, it is happening here, but the Democratic leadership is saying: “It’s not happening here.” “We must be prayerful.” “It’s not happening here.” They keep repeating it over and over thinking that it will become the truth if they say it enough times.
They abide by the norms, act with politeness, come to work every day (when they are not on recess) raise money, admonish the Trump administration, chat up donors, help fellow Republicans get unqualified judges appointed to the courts because their fellow Republicans helped them. They talk about a return to normalcy when normalcy is what go us here. It is mass delusion.
The leadership of the Democratic Party, the corporate media, and the moneyed elite want to pretend this country has not been taken over by a Russian asset and his enablers who are involved in varying degrees with an international crime syndicate and allied with a radical religious quest for power.
People like Bill Barr and Mitch McConnell have been waiting for, planning for a Donald Trump for decades. They have their man and they are not going to give up. They have cast their lot with Trump and they will tear the country apart to maintain and expand their power.
Meanwhile, nice people, good people, like Joyce Vance will continue to tell everyone that our institutions will hold, that dedicated professionals in government will assure that justice vanquishes all.
The time to be nice is over. Those who don’t want to fight, who don’t understand that it is essential to fight, need to get out of the way.
-
Frank Bruni published an opinion piece in the New York Times last week entitled: “The Democrats have a Politeness Problem.”
In this article, Bruni argued that the Democratic candidates are too polite with each other, afraid to point out each other’s weaknesses when Donald Trump will certainly not do likewise.
The article is a frustrating but illustrative example of how the corporate press, unable to think of anything constructive to do, pursues a “damned if you do, dammed if you don’t” argument when discussing the Democratic Party.
Bruni criticizes the Democratic candidates for not calling each other out over accepting corporate donations (Warren) or a less than progressive career as a prosecutor (Harris) but then points out that Julian Castro’s comment in the debates about Biden’s memory (which I did not take as an “obvious insinuation…that Biden was in serious cognitive decline”) “…went too far.” Jesus.
Similarly, when Democratic candidates just talked about Medicare-for-All, the corporate media spent days accusing the Democrats of attacking themselves. Advocacy for Medicare-for-all was treated in the corporate press as if it were a direct attack on Obama and everything he stood for.
A similar schizoid worry/condemn theme runs through other coverage. Is the Democratic candidate too left wing? Are the Democrats going too far in the impeachment inquiry? Are they going too fast? Are they going to slow? Are they being overly broad or overly narrow in the scope of the impeachment inquiry?
All of this reminds me of what it’s like to be a woman. Is the dress too long, too short, too dowdy, too sexy, to provocative?
I’m sick of it. The corporate media is full of this sort of coverage. And, the Democrats are so afraid of provoking this condemnation, they can’t move. They are like proverbial deer in the headlights.
The Democrats as a Party do indeed have a politeness problem, but it does not involve their competition with each other or their advocacy of policy. The politeness problem involves calling out the Trump Administration and its Republican enablers.
On Friday, Rep. Steve Israel was asked by a reporter if the Democrat should get tougher on members of the administration who were openly flouting the law and defying subpoenas. Should, the reporter asked, Democrats move to strategies like garnishing wages which the Congress can do for people who defy subpoenas. Oh, not now, Israel responded. We don’t want to do that, not when they have just started cooperating.
Israel is probably playing a scenario in his mind where Frank Bruni comes out with an opinion piece accusing the Democrats of “going too far” or being savage, or too aggressive, or something.
Where is courage? Where is righteous indignation? Where is moral certainty? Where are the people who aren’t afraid of speaking the truth no matter what the goddamn New York Times might think?
Law, Power, and Justice 