I had not realized that Ken and Alan are old comrades from the Jeffrey Epstein legal team that fixed the deal with Alex Acosta. Working for Trump is, perhaps, a move up. Ken has been very understanding of sexual offenders, and represents the murderers at Blackwater. Dershowitz has specialized in sleaze, and is currently a member of Harvey Weinstein’s legal team. As a rule criminal lawyers are not regarded with the same suspicion and/or loathing as their defendants, but I think Trump, Starr, and Dershowitz are peas from the same pod.
20 I 2020: Impeachment trial as emetic
Tomorrow the trial, but it’s not a trial, it’s a political process, blah, blah.
Tomorrow the trial begins, and I’m trying to figure out how to avoid it. I’m already disgusted. One might think we were having re-runs of the O.J. Trial. Even Alan Dershowitz has shown up again. I think Dershowitz must be the Rev. Al Sharpton of trials, appearing in the right place and time to stay in the public eye. Mr. Self-righteous Ken Starr is going to hold his nose and come out of retirement to help God’s anointed. Both want a part in the week-long soap opera extravaganza in which Trump will be the hero who controls all the others from afar. All we need is Rudy Giulliani coming out of a tiny automobile with a mob of crooked Ukrainians.
And the “jury”! For most Republicans currently in the Senate the common good is of little to no importance — their sole goal is to be re-elected. And for fear of alienating some Trump voters they have enslaved themselves to a childish vulgarian bigot. Trump and his myriad toadies make me think of Rudyard Kipling’s epitaph for a dead statesman of WWI.
I could not dig, I dared not rob,
And so I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue,
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale will serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
10 I 2020: Suggestions and a query
A. Here is a short list of people I’d prefer not to see in the news:
1) Lindsey Graham — a complete disgrace.
2) Donald Trump, Jr. — He is not news until the law finally catches up with him.
3) Harvey Weinstein — He is revolting. Just let us know when he is sentenced.
4) Mike Pompeio — Why repeat his lies, when tomorrow there will be new lies?
5) Same goes for William Barr, a flaming hypocrite.
6) and, most of all, Rudy Giulliani — never has so little managed to go so far.
B. Query: Why does the White House so regularly screw up, as in the assassination of Suleiman? The government is revealed as wholly uncoordinated. We learn that staff of the allegedly threatened embassies know nothing about a possible attack. The Secretary of Defense had no knowledge of imminent attacks. Indeed, evidence of the imminence of an attack is unavailable except to the President’s inner circle. Given the Trump administration’s history for withholding the truth and telling downright lies, why, in the absence of any supportive evidence, should we believe what they say?
6 I 2019: Where are our friends now? Oh, who needs friends?
Whether or not Trump’s “America First” policy was intended to alienate our friends and allies does not matter, it has had that effect. He acted against the advice of the military, guided by those seasoned statesmen Mike Pompeio and Mike Pence. Pence, I guess, was able to draw on his experience of Near Eastern Indiana, and Pompeio learned a lot, I’m sure, when he was trying to destroy the CIA. I’m sure Trump did not need a lot of persuading, for if there is any wrong-headed and immature advice to be had, Trump will find and follow it. Trump’s murder of Soleimani was so stupid, so naive, so inflammatory, that even our good friends the Israelis are keeping their distance.
So now, Trump, all alone (except for P and P, and Giulliani) on the Empire State Building is pounding his chest and firing off one grave threat after another, scared shitless of Iranian retaliation. He’s even going to bomb Iran’s cultural sites, a war crime … Trump probably did not know it is a war crime, but now that he knows it surely doesn’t matter.
4 I 2020: Look! What’s that up in the sky?
Various outlets of Russian media are claiming that Trump’s impeachment is the real explanation for his murder of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. Of course they are right. Trump has not gone so far as to start a war as a distraction from his impeachment, but he is well on his way.
The hit on Soleimani was an assassination, was a Pearl Harbor. Let’s not mince words. Soleimani was planning attacks on American contractors, military and diplomatic personnel. How many others in this troubled world are doing the same thing? Will Trump put out contracts on all of them and reduce our military to the status of hit-men? “The Boss wants Soleimani out of the way. Take care of it.”
Trump alleges that he was acting to protect Americans and American interests. What’s wrong with that? He was protecting American military whom he has scattered around the Near East. He was protecting American diplomats whose installations are devoted to espionage and clandestine operations. He was protecting American contractors, the shock troops in America’s undeclared wars.
Now I must admit that the first time I heard this term “contractor” used in connection with the Near East was when several American contractors were brutally murdered by the Iraqui resistance. My first thought was: How dreadful! American contractors travel over there to supervise construction, operate heavy equipment, restore the Iraqui infrastructure, and what do they get? But then I learned that “contractor” is a camouflage word for a mercenary, a hired gun. “Contractors'” work is very dangerous — just look at the Wikipedia article “List of private contractor deaths in Iraq” — but they are paid very well for a skill that is of no value at home. These contractors are America’s “militia” in the Near East, a small proxy army. I’m sorry to hear that an American contractor was recently killed in Iraq, but contracting is a demanding job.
30 XII 2019: Unamerican tweeter activity
Today we heard again from Mr. Ken Cuccinelli who put his feet in his mouth again in a tweet (Oh, the apple does not fall far from the tree, does it?) in which he said that Grafton Thomas is not as “american” as he ought to be. Thomas is the deranged man who attacked a Hanukkah party in a rabbi’s home in N.Y. state. He is the son of a sometime illegal alien, now a U.S. citizen, whose children are all birthright citizens. But Ken attributes Thomas’ hate crime to a want of amurrican values. He wrote: “Apparently, American values did not take hold among this entire family, at least this one violent, and apparently bigoted son.” Ken might have since deleted this tweet; at least it has disappeared. Why would he delete it??? Because it made even more obvious that he is a xenophobic nutcase.
You know, the name Cuccinelli sounds more Italian than American. Ken’s great-grandfather, Dominic Cuccinelli, was an immigrant. His grandfather, Dominick, was conceived in Italy and born in the U.S. Ties to the old country remained strong, for Dominick got his cousins Mario and Silvio into the United States. Did the Cuccinelli family absorb American values? No doubt they did, but “at least this one violent, and apparently bigoted son,” their famous son, Ken, has not. His career and his atrocious behavior as part of the Trump Gang show clearly that whatever values he holds, he does not share American values.
27 XII 2019: No glass ceiling for “christian” women
Donald Trump has proven time and again that he is a misogynist. But he seems to be trying to overcome his deservedly awful reputation by appointment of able women to high places in his regime. We’ve read of the appointment of the photogenic Pastor Paula White as White House Advisor on Religion, and now there is cheering news that the good-looking woman who calls herself “Jenna Ellis, Esq.” is to be joining Rudy and the rest on Trump’s legal team.
Like Pastor White, Jenna Ellis, Esq. is a professional “christian.” Her particular apostolate is constant denunciation of gays and all their works and pomps. She has been assistant professor of legal studies at Colorado Christian University and has more recently been appointed to be director of the Public Policy Center at the James Dobson Family Institute. What “christian” credentials!
Why does an inveterate pagan like Trump want to have good-looking “christian” women around him? Well, Paula is blond and Jenna is almost, so maybe they are avatars of Ivanka. Or maybe he hopes that professionally “christian” women will be able to resist his powerful sexual magnetism and won’t come on to him at embarrassing times.
One would expect these appointments to be welcomed by the Evangelical Party. However, there may be a surprise in store, for it says in First Corinthians: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” But the Evangelical Party has shown that it will ignore any number of biblical injunctions in its quest for political influence.
24 XII 2019: Hate mongering politicians, murderous voters
News today about a woman in Iowa named Nicole Marie Poole Franklin who, enabled by Trump’s dog-whistle war against people of color, revved up her Jeep Cherokee and ran over a twelve-year-old African-American boy and a fourteen-year-old Hispanic girl. Police Chief Michael Venema declared at a press conference: “I want to say, in the strongest terms possible, that there is no place in our community — or any other — for this type of hatred and violence.” Very true, but that means there is no place for Trump, Stephen Miller, the White Supremacists, the rebel militias, and all the rest who feel that their hates and prejudices have been made legitimate by the Age of Trump.
23 XII 2019: 1) Pharisees howl 2) Trump staying out of the light
1) Everywhere I’ve seen articles headed “200 evangelical leaders slam Christianity Today“* The 200 denounce the author of the spirited editorial in Christianity Today because they claim he “offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations.” Let’s look at this. offensively questioned: If they were not offended the editorial failed. Pharisees find any criticism deeply offensive and sometimes react violently. questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions: No. He was not questioning the integrity of the tens-of-millions, but of their leaders. Like speaks to like, and evangelical hustlers swarm around Trump because their avarice, debauchery, lust for power, demagoguery, and insincerity are perfectly matched by his. I read that he is going to install in the White House his thrice-married spiritual director and Chair of the Evangelical Advisory Board, Pastor Paula White, as a kind of Secretary of Religion. Pastors of mega-churches, televangelists, and evangelical movers and shakers must be hoping that evangelicalism is on its way to again being made the state religion and that Trump will force America to be “christian country.”
*Google search could not squeeze all this into their titling over a Fox report, so it reads “Nearly 200 evangelical leaders condemned Christianity ….”
2) Trump’s craving for secrecy is a paradox. He has led a resolutely public life of which most would be ashamed. So why the utter refusal to cooperate with Congress? Maybe he believes in the divine right of kings to be never answerable to the people they govern. Maybe he is so absolute in his refusal to cooperate because if you give them something innocuous, then they will be demanding something that could be damaging. Or maybe he thinks that the monarch-president is more broadly protected by the Vth amendment and so all his court can decline to testify because it might tend to incriminate Trump. Or maybe it is as simple as John 3:20: “For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”
17 XII 2019: Pre-perjured puppets
I was happy to find an article that answered my question: “Don’t the Republican senators have to at least pretend to be ready to make an impartial judgement in the impeachment case?” And I’ve learned from Prof. Jeffrey K. Tulis that they do. Like members of a jury they must take an oath and declare “I solemnly swear [or affirm] that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of [the person being impeached], now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws. So help me God.” Now I don’t see how Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell, just to cite two, can possibly take this oath in good conscience and in compliance with the law. Mr. Graham, an intimate of the President, has already boasted “I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror,” and Mr. McConnell has pledged to work closely with the accused, that is with Trump’s, legal team. So we will have a trial with at least one potential juror announcing his verdict in advance and another collaborating with the lawyers of the person on trial. In an ordinary trial the prejudiced can be rejected from the jury at the voir dire. So we must rely on prejudiced senators to reject themselves. I propose that any senator who cannot truthfully take the oath should recuse him/herself from the impeachment trial. If they do not, I propose that there be an investigation into their words and actions during the trial, and if they have broken their oaths they should be charged with perjury.