The Washington Post is reporting that Pelosi will announce an impeachment inquiry this afternoon.  Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi is at the Atlantic Festival laughing and making jokes and coy statements about impeachment.  I will never forgive her for this.

As David Jolly pointed out this morning, any inquiry should include William Barr and Mick Mulvaney.

As a reminder of where we are as a nation, Trump gave a speech this morning to the UN in which he appeared drugged.  He slurred words, had difficulty reading the teleprompter, snorted and sniffed like he had just had a hit of cocaine.  As someone on Twitter remarked: I have heard people make more animated deathbed confessions.  The media followed this extraordinary performance with the narrative that Trump had given a “subdued” performance.  This unwillingness to call reality reality is what helped get us Trump.  It will also be what helps Trump and the Republicans maintain control.

Dig in your fingernails.

Nightly Roundup

• Several freshman Democrats have published a letter calling for impeachment. It appears that the leadership of the Democratic Party will have to be dragged along kicking and screaming.
• There is, however, a meeting called tomorrow and people are speculating that perhaps the leadership will talk about impeachment. I’ll believe it…
• Elaine Luria (D-Virginia) is one of the freshman Democrats calling for impeachment. She is a Navy vet.  “I came to Congress to do what was right,” she said on Rachael Maddow tonight.  How many other members of Congress can sincerely say the same?  Not many.
• It might be a good time to think about why so many of those in Congress are willing to sell their souls and support a clearly criminal president to keep their jobs. It’s not the salary.
• Mitch McConnell has approved a bill that is basically what Jennifer Cohn (an election security advocate, writer and attorney) calls a “free for all” for corrupt vendors of voting machines who contribute to his campaign. She argues that the bill will make things worse because it enables “corrupt officials to buy whatever hackable unauditable voting machines they want.”  “McConnel,” she says “is conning everyone.
• Trump has been ordered by a judge to give videotaped testimony in a trial involving Trump’s former bodyguard, Keith Schiller. Trump’s lawyers are fighting this tooth and nail.  They will be appearing in court tomorrow to attempt to stop the judge’s order.
• The Washington Post is reporting that Trump told Mick Mulvaney to hold back $400 million in military aid to Ukraine at least a week before the July 25, 2019 phone call with the president of Ukraine. Reports had previously pointed out that the aid had been stopped only after the phone call.
• In addition, “administration officials were instructed to tell lawmakers that the delays (of the military funding) were part of an “interagency process” but to give them no additional information…” So, not only was the funding put on hold, but there was a story constructed specifically to disguise the true nature of the withholding.  There were other people in the White House involved in putting together this story and passing it along.

Lest we forget,

• Mitch McConnell made it possible to lift sanctions on Oleg Deripaska.
• Ivanka Trump is getting new Chinese trademarks for voting machines.
• Hunter Biden had no experience that would have made him a reasonable choice to sit on the board of the Ukrainian gas company. (Carole Lenoig)

Afternoon: 20 September 2019

The Wall Street Journal (Alan Cullison, Rebecca Ballhaus and Dustin Volz) is reporting that in a July phone call with the president of Ukraine, Trump pressured the president “about eight times” to work with Rudy Giuliani on an investigation of Biden.  This “according to people familiar with the matter.”

Quote from the Article:

“He told him that he should work with [Mr. Giuliani] on Biden, and that people in Washington wanted to know” if his lawyer’s assertions that Mr. Biden acted improperly as vice president were true, one of the people said. Mr. Trump didn’t mention a provision of U.S. aid to Ukraine on the call, said this person, who didn’t believe Mr. Trump offered the Ukrainian president any quid-pro-quo for his cooperation on any investigation.

John Heilemann, on Nicolle Wallace, noted that this article most probably came from Trump sources and with the framing that the White House wanted to establish.  They offered the “around eight times” to get it in the news stream, but are setting up the frame that there’s no wrongdoing because there was no “quid-pro-quo.” In an afternoon tweet, Elizabeth da la Vega (former federal prosecutor) makes the same point.

This is a fascinating example of what looks like the White House selectively leaking information to the media while framing the story in a way that is advantageous to them.  It is all fascinating.

It’s the most riveting political drama ever and the stakes are THE WHOLE WORLD.

Further Notes:

• Seth Abramson is tweeting that the Ukrainian President said on September 13 that the U.S. not only released $250 million in military aid, but also extended another $140 million. What was that for?

And on other topics:

• MSNBC is reporting that Netanyahu is to be indicted.

The Whistleblower:

• August 12, 2019. An employee within the intelligence community, detailed to the White House, filed a whistleblower complaint.  This person witnessed or became aware of an act that was so egregious that s/he felt compelled to file a formal complaint, risking his/her career.
• The press reported that the complaint involved a phone call between Trump and a foreign leader. The conversation involved a “promise.”
• Ned Price, interviewed on MSNBC, remarked that even though Trump has been careless about divulging classified information in the past (for example, to the Russians in the Oval office) this instance seemed to him not likely to be a matter of carelessness, but “closer to betrayal.”
• Various commentators noted that the whistleblower could only have had access to a phone call or the transcript of a phone call if s/he was highly placed. They noted that there were not very many people in the circle of people who would have had access to this information.
• The Trump administration had limited the number of people who had access to the transcripts of phone calls with foreign leaders because of embarrassing information that leaked about such conversations in the past (such as the conversation with the Australian PM).
• In line with the Whistleblower Protection Act, the complaint was filed with the Inspector General (IG) of the intelligence services.
• The IG considered the complaint to be “credible and urgent” and therefore passed it along to the Director of National Intelligence as he is required by law to do.
• The IG deemed the complaint to be credible and determined that it should be passed along to Congress.
• Whistleblower complaints are routinely passed to Congress even those not deemed to be credible by the IG.
• The Director of National Intelligence, Dan McGuire refused to comply with a Tuesday (September 18, 2019) deadline and pass the complaint on to the Congress.
• In a statement issued on September 20, 2019 Nancy Pelosi wrote: “We will continue to follow the facts and explore every possible option…” Right, and that’s all they will do.

Relevant Time Line.

• July 25, 2019. Trump as conversation with President of Ukraine (Volodymyr Zelensky).  He later (9/20/19) characterized the call as “beautiful.”
• After the call, the Ukrainian president’s office gave a readout that said that the two talked about “investigations into corruption cases that have hampered interaction between Ukraine and the U.S.A.” (ABC News)
• July 29, 2019. Trump announces that Director of National Intelligence,  Dan Coats will resign in August. (WP)
• July 31, 2019. A phone call was initiated by the White House to Putin.  The White House put out information that the call had involved a discussion about assistance with Siberian wildfires.  According to Ned Price, interviewed by MSNBC, the Kremlin released information that the discussion had been about the reestablishment of bilateral relations between Russia and the U.S.  This phone call was two weeks before the whistleblower complaint.
• August 2, 2019. US withdraws from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia.
• August 8, 2019. Trump announces Joseph Maguire would take the role of DNI as acting.  He bypassed Sue Gordon who had been Coat’s second in command. Gordon would resign.
• August 12, 2019. Whistleblower files complaint.
• September 9, 2019 Letter from DNI IG, Michael Atkinson to House Intelligence Committee. The letter noted that the complaint rose to a level of “urgent concern” and “appeared credible” enough to warrant congressional notification. (ABC News)
• September 13, 2019. Shiff subpoenas Maguire to compel him to disclose the whistleblower complaint.
• September 17, 2019. Maguire says he will not testify or hand over the complaint.  Shiff says that Maguire told him he couldn’t “because he is being instructed not to, that this involved a higher authority, someone above.”
• September 19, 2019. Atkinson is scheduled to brief members of the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door session.
• September 20, 2019 Lindsay Graham threatens the whistleblower saying that he will go to prison.
• September 20,2019. Trump denies knowing the identity of the whistleblower, but says that the person is a “partisan.”  He adds that this means that it’s a person from “the other party.”  He calls the controversy “just another political hack job.”   He suggests that somebody should look into Biden.  A quote from a White House briefing: “It doesn’t matter what I discuss, but I will say this: Somebody ought to look into Joe Biden’s statement, because it was disgraceful where he talked about billions of dollars that he’s not giving to a certain country unless a certain prosecutor is taken off the case,” Trump asserted. “So somebody ought to look into that. And you wouldn’t, because he’s a Democrat. And the fake news doesn’t look into things like that. It’s a disgrace.”  ABC News

Other Notes:

• The whistleblower now has an attorney.

And, lest we forget, this week…

• NBC News reported that William Barr “strongly endorsed” a 2017 book accusing colleges and universities of unfairly punishing male students accused of rape.
• Jamie Raskin appeared on Chris Hayes to talk about Trump passing information to a foreign leader and the fact that the Justice Department was preventing whistleblower information from being passed to Congress as is specified in the law. When introduced, Raskin sat staring into the camera with a big grin on his face.  Is there not one person in public life who takes their job seriously?  Raskin also insulted our intelligence by claiming that the Democrats were doing their jobs and holding Trump accountable.

The Last Word, 20 September 2019

Constitutional law professor, Laurence Tribe, discusses the federal court filing by Trump’s lawyers today.  Lawrence O’Donnell asks Tribe if the President’s lawyers are correct that the President cannot be investigated.

Tribe responds: “…the position that his lawyers were taking today in the federal court filing is even more extreme than that.  They have taken the position that the President’s company cannot be investigated…that the whole state proceeding must be stopped..”

“…when the judge has to finally rule on this outlandish claim that you cannot investigate criminality….the judge will have the obligation…to dismiss the case…”

Trump’s lawyers are arguing that Trump, his minions and his company cannot be investigated for any act while he is President.

Tribe calls this an “absurd argument” and “astonishing.”

“That cannot be the law in the United States,” says Tribe.

This is a tweet from Elizabeth de la Vega, a former federal prosecutor.

Congress should file a petition for a writ of mandamus ordering the ADNI to turn over the complaint as required by the statute. The IG & the WB can simultaneously jointly file a nearly identical petition, attaching the complaint under seal.

So, why isn’t this being done now?

Congress has the power to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch.  If they do not use it, the Executive will become an autocrat.  This is exactly what has happened and the question is why?  Why won’t the members of Congress do their job?

IMPEACH BRET KAVANAUGH

Kavanaugh Notes

• According to reporting this morning, not ONE Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Bret Kavanaugh about his finances during the confirmation hearing.
• Who paid off Kavaaugh’s debts?
• How did he maintain membership in a $90,000 a year country club?
• Why did Anthony Kennedy retire (leaving a spot for Kavanaugh) shortly after his son was outed as having gotten a loan for Trump from Deutsche Bank?
• Chris Coons (A DEMOCRAT) arranged a “compromise” with Jeff Flake which helped the Kavanaugh nomination get through the confirmation. This was an agreement about having a limited “investigation.”  Why isn’t Chris Coons being called in front of a Senate Committee and asked about the details of that agreement?  You can phone and thank Coons for his service to the country and women at this number (202) 224-5042.
• Presidential candidates Warren, Castro, and Harris have come out asking for Kavanaugh to be impeached. All agree that the process which resulted in his confirmation was flawed.  That’s a polite term.  The process was a set up which succeeded in getting Kavanaugh confirmed with the help of at least one Democrat, Coons.
• Who participated in the investigation of Kavanaugh at the FBI? Who talked to the corroborating witnesses? What are their names?  Why aren’t they being called in front of a Senate Committee?
• Who at the FBI gave field agents word that they were not to do a vigorous investigation?
• Who gave the FBI the word that this investigation was to be a pro-forma piece of work.
• According to Joyce Vance, the FBI has refused to allow Congress to look at the 500-page “investigation” of Kavanaugh. They are denying access in response to a FOIA request claiming executive privilege.
• There are also notes that FBI agents filed along with the investigation report. Why aren’t these being subpoenaed?
• During the confirmation hearings, John Cornyn whined and lamented the fact that people wouldn’t come forward publicly with their accusations against Bret Kavanaugh. At that time corroborating witnesses were trying to have the FBI listen to their testimony.
• The FBI, according to these witnesses, assigned low-level staffers to do a cursory interview and then never contacted them again.
• The bottom line is that the Republicans couldn’t care less if the accusations against Bret Kavanaugh are true (financial, sexual any). He is there to advance a right-wing, anti-democratic, kleptocratic agenda.  That’s all they care about.
• The Courts (packed with right-wing ideologues) will bring down democracy as fast and as conclusively as any coup.

Some thoughts about the The Wider Significance

• Pro forma investigations (like the Mueller Report) are a well-used way of burying, and denaturing incriminating information. The people who participate in them are part of the cover up (Mueller, Rosenstein, Barr, etc).   Democrat Chris Coons is as much a part of the covering up of incriminating information against Kavanaugh and his successful confirmation as any Republican.
• Corroborating witnesses for Blasey Ford were given little attention and investigation and weren’t called upon to testify at the confirmation hearing.
• This is EXACTLY what Joe Biden helped engineer for Anita Hill. There were women willing and ready to go before the committee and give testimony and Biden helped block it along with the Republicans.
• Nobody is asking Biden about this on the campaign trail.
• We must remove the entire leadership class of the Democratic Party. They must go if we are ever going to have a decent country.
• One of the corroborating witnesses coming forward says that he remembers Bret Kavanaugh at another party, not the one where Blasey Ford was raped, where Kavanaugh had his pants down and his friends shoved his penis in the face of a woman. What kind of people participate in a party where men handle and shove another man’s penis in the face of a young woman?  What kind of man drops his pants and allows, directs, orders other men to handle his penis and shove it in the face of a young woman?  Exactly what level of perversion are we dealing with among the men in this cohort?  If this is what’s on the surface, what’s underneath?
• Who are the men at these parties? What are their names?  Where are they now?  What positions of public trust do they hold?  Who is covering up for them?
• Jeffrey Epstein was selling little girls to other men and raping them himself. Think of all the men who covered up for him.  What more is there underneath this behavior?
• We still don’t know exactly what role Kavanaugh played in the Bush/Cheney torture program. According to Thom Hartmann, 90% of Kavanaugh’s paperwork on this was never released.
• I would also like to remind you that cheerful, laughing, having a great time covering all this Nicolle Wallace had no moral qualms working in the Bush/Cheney torture administration. She has often on her show, issued self-righteous calls for other members of the Trump administration to resign, but she never did.  She worked for a man who lied us into a war and manipulated the legal system to justify torture.  But, now, she has her own show on MSNBC and defends the Bushes.
• Trump is tweeting today that the Justice Department should come to Kavanaugh’s rescue. Seems like to me they already have.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is your Justice Department – a corrupt organization working for a corrupt president.

Please don’t hold out the notion that we have a functioning democracy any more.  This is a kleptocracy masquerading as a government.  To do anything about it people are going to have to start realizing that this is a war not a garden party and every person must stop laughing, giggling, making jokes, saying “ain’t he awful,” boosting their careers, white-washing what’s going on.

It no good to bury your heads and complain that discussing politics makes your lunch uncomfortable.  “Oh, it upsets me too much.”  Upsetting?  Damn right it is.  What’s going to be more upsetting is living in a country with a totally corrupt political, legal, criminal justice system.  Its high time people got upset, protested, went to the streets demanded that politicians act.  This nice, polite, oh somebody will sort it out, is not going to work.  You can’t be friends with people who are enemies of democracy.  You just can’t.  Old Scottish song: Which side are you on?

We must continue fighting the Roberts Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court today issued a ruling that would allow the Trump administration to bar most Central American migrants from seeking asylum.

“They’re fleeing from violence and poverty,” notes a representative from the ACLU, referring to the migrants.  But, over on Fox News, people seeking asylum are being presented as drug dealers and participants in human trafficking.

The new rules sought by the Trump Administration forbid asylum applications from those who have gone through another country and not been refused asylum in that country.  In other words, people who have not sought asylum in the third country.

In July, the Roberts Court allowed Trump to begin using $2.5 billion in Pentagon money to construct a barrier along the Mexican border.

Last year, the Roberts court upheld the ban on travel from several predominately Muslim countries, rejecting the argument that the ban was targeting a religious group.

The Courts did not even come up in the questions asked by the ABC commentators in the Democratic Debate.  But, any candidate must come up with a plan for what Democrats propose to do about the packing of the court by the Republicans and the effects of the Roberts Court.

Coyle, Marcia (9/11/19) Law.com article about Barr v. East Bay Sanctuary Covenant.

https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2019/09/11/supreme-court-wont-block-trumps-new-asylum-rule-for-now/?slreturn=20190812064036

“We Know Where Your Kids Live”: How John Bolton Once Threatened an International Official

It’s morning, for me at least.  Massive amounts of coffee with heavy cream, the Tuesday trip to the vet to get my 21 year old cat fluids.

I spent most of the night dreaming that I was struggling to get to Trump’s funeral.  The rest of the night I spent angry and frustrated because my brother-in-law burned down our hour.  Sign of the times?

Jair Bolsonaro says he is refusing to accept $20 million from the G7 to help fight the fires in the Amazon.  Of course he did.  He helped start the fires by announcing publicly that the Amazon was open for exploitation.  If he accepts the money he would be admitting that there is a problem.  What’s the problem?  The entire modern Conservative movement is telling us that individuals pursuing their own self-interest will provide Nirvana for us all.  Burn away.  We’re on the way to utopia.

Elie Mystal, lawyer, editor of Above the Law, and national treasure has published an article detailing the kinds of hateful, horrid tweets he gets on a regular basis.  This is a man who is not afraid to speak the truth even if it’s uncomfortable.  He regularly talks about things like Mueller’s disastrous chickenshit report and how Mueller has failed us.  This is a subject media anchors cut off as soon as they can.  Mystel also displays the utter rage that many of us feel about what is going on in the country not only with Trump, the Republicans and the conservative movement in general.  He also talks about the cowardice of the Democratic Party, a discussion that definitely needs to be had.  He fights for us.  That’s why he’ll never be given a show on MSNBC.

Under the heading of gratuitous Bernie bashing today: Richard Haas said on @morningjoe that Bernie Sanders would contribute a lot of “Trumpisms” in terms of foreign policy if he were elected.  The casual Bernie Bashing has become endemic among the punditocracy.

Maybe the day will get better.

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. – George Orwell

Two weeks into the Trump administration thousands of documents detailing animal welfare violations nationwide were removed from the website of the Department of Agriculture which had been posting this information for decades.  The records included inspection records and animal abuse reports from commercial animal facilities in the U.S. including zoos, breeders, factory farms, and laboratories.

To some that might seem like a trivial concern given the enormity of the threat that the Trump administration presented.  It is far from trivial.

As an animal lover I was incensed by the action.  But as a social scientist, I saw this move for exactly what it was – an attempt to control information, as Orwell wrote to “control the past.”  It was an attempt to own reality and I knew that it would not stop.

Predictably, the Trump administration soon started trying to control and distort information about climate change.  It has been doing so ever since.

As just one recent example, in March of 2019 officials of the Trump Administration neutered a news release written by scientists which showed that climate change could have a withering effect on the economy of California by inundating real estate over the next few decades.  An earlier draft, written by scientists, was “sanitized” to mute the impact of the research.

The report had detailed that California, the world’s fifth-largest economy, would face more than $100 billion in damages related to climate change and sea-level rise by the end of the century.  But, people realizing the effects of climate change might lead to action.  It’s better for authoritarians to manipulate and create their own information.

In an article in the Nation, George Grandin, has written about how fundamental to the ideology of the modern conservative movement is the notion that only individual rights have any standing.  Social rights – the rights of the collective – to health care, education, clean environment are considered dangerous.  The lie that the Conservative movement tells itself and us is that individuals, pursuing their own self-interest will somehow, miraculously, provide a society that functions in the interests of us all.

This is bull shit.

Those committed to the primacy of individual rights pit them in opposition to social rights and despise even the notion of the wider good.  They try to destroy any talk of, thought of, example of or advocacy of social rights.  This is one of the reasons they have fought so hard against the ACA.  It is why they are so terrified of science, of facts.  They wish to convince the American people, and indeed the world, that individual rights if allowed to be expressed unfettered will result in the good of all.

Grandin calls it individual rights exclusivism.

Authoritarian governments around the world are denying social rights and manipulating information to make it seem as if unfettered capitalism will reward us all.  The Brazilian government, for example, recently sacked the head of the National Institute for Space Research who had released data showing a 278 percent increase in deforestation in July compared with the figures for a year ago.  Bolsonaro portrays himself as a champion of indigenous people by taking measures to open the Amazon to exploitation.  If he can, he will hide the science, the facts that demonstrate the lie of his actions and the devastation that will result.

At the G7, Trump refused to attend a crucial meeting on climate change, biodiversity and the Amazon fires.  If you ignore the problem, it goes away at least in the bubble you and your media outlets create.

As Jon Lee Anderson wrote recently in the New Yorker, authoritarian leaders around the world share a “vocabulary of intolerance, insult and menace.”  Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil is one of those leaders.

Bolsonaro has made statements such as: “I would be incapable of loving a homosexual son.”  “I would prefer that my son die in an accident than show up with some guy with a mustache.”  He called a political rival, Maria do Rosario, “not worth raping.”  And, he has called immigrants “scum.”  The United Nations he called “a bunch of communists.”  He supports the torture of drug dealers, approves of the use of firing squads and advocates for a macho hyper-aggressive police force.  “A policeman who doesn’t kill,” he has said, “isn’t a policeman.”

His insult and menace extend to the environment.  Soon after taking office, he announced that he would open the Amazon to the private agribusiness interests who support him.  Bolsonaro and his administration cynically present themselves as acting in the interests of the indigenous population, allowing them to open up their lands to private exploitation and therefore gain themselves.  But, the indigenous populations will not gain from private exploitation of the Amazon, Bolsonaro and his class will.

Authoritarian leaders are destroying the planet for profit and we have to stop them.

See the full New Yorker Article

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/01/jair-bolsonaros-southern-strategy

“We have to come to the clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”  Franklin Roosevelt, 1944.

At “Lunch with Southern Ladies” a friend asked with a smirk on her face if I were going to campaign for Bernie Sanders in 2020.  I didn’t expect it from her, the smirk, especially in front of five other women.  But, that’s when you smirk isn’t it, when you feel you are in sympathetic company, when there are other people there to buffer it.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t see the smirk before.  It reminded me of the smirks so frequently on the faces of commentators on the Cable News Channels when they mention Bernie Sanders.  (Not that they do that very often.  Recently, the strategy has been just to not mention him at all, as if he were not running.)

It was another example of how the attitudes and narratives pumped out on television filter down to the population.  The non-stop campaign of vilification, disrespect, condescension, derision and neglect of Sanders has had its effect.

The culmination of this recently was when an educated attorney, a former prosecutor, Mimi Rocah, commented on MSNBC that Bernie Sanders made her “skin crawl.”  She’s still, by the way, on the network.  Were she male, and had she said this about any other candidate she would no longer be on television.

I did not explain to my Southern Ladies friend why I am supporting, campaigning for, voting for Bernie Sanders, but if I were going to, I would recommend she read an article that was in the Nation Magazine by George Grandin.

Grandin talks about how fundamental to the ideology of the modern conservative movement is the notion that only individual rights have any standing.  Social rights – to health care, education, clean environment are dangerous.  The ideal society in their minds, and the one for which they tirelessly war, is one in which individuals, pursuing their own self-interest will somehow, miraculously, provide a society that functions in the interests of us all.  Anyone with a kindergarten education who thinks knows this is bull shit.  It was bullshit when the first settlers came here and destroyed the indigenous population and it’s bullshit now.

But, those committed to individual rights pit them in opposition to social rights and despise the notion of social rights in general.  They try to destroy any talk of, thought of, example of or advocacy of social rights as legitimate.  This is one of the reasons they have fought so hard against the ACA.

Grandin calls it individual rights exclusivism.  As he maintains, Sanders is the only candidate fighting against the exclusion of social rights from the discussion.  This and the fact that Sanders is the only candidate with a real class analysis is why I will vote for him.

Just a note: Today, Sanders is the only candidate talking about the fires in the Amazon and the destruction of the environment and the economy that will result from the rise to power of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.  Cable News doesn’t even cover international news anymore.

If you haven’t seen Judgment at Nuremberg in the past year, watch it.

Fighting for justice at every opportunity.