Reactionary propagandists have jumped squealing on Ms Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who addressed the U.N. about the climate crisis. Ms Thunberg evoked dismissals from right-wing mouthpieces that were variously hostile, aggrieved, furious, self-righteous, condescending, boorish, and cliché-ridden. These voices of the raving right are a cry of touché. They have embarrassed themselves and shown that Ms Thunberg’s eloquence and cogency caused them and their owners a degree of anguish.
20 IX 2019: Acting director of national intelligence joins the Justice Obstruction Team
Joseph McGuire, the acting director of national intelligence and another Trump creature, is refusing to do his duty and transmit the Whistleblower’s complaint to Congress. He is to “testify” before the House Intelligence Committee on in open session on Sept. 26. Why open session? He will say nothing, nothing, lies, and nothing again. It will be Corey Lewandowski all over.
McGuire says the information he has received is potentially privileged and outside the scope of the House Intelligence Committee’s work. “Potentially privileged”! It seems to me that acting director of national intelligence ought to know whether information is privileged. Or not or is he uncertain because Trump and Co. haven’t told him how they are going to play this. They don’t know whether to claim the executive privilege that covers a multitude of sins or the familiar TOP SECRET privilege.
This is a case of the accused telling the court what kind of evidence it can access.
I’m willing to bet that the foreign leader in question is Bibi Netanyahu and that Trump promised him America’s backing no matter who wins the Israeli election. Plausible?
19 IX 2019: Conspiracy within the government? Yes.
1) A report on CNN today observed:
“Witnesses are increasingly showing up at hearings — like Lewandowski — armed with letters from the White House lawyers advising them to limit their testimony to issues not likely to be involved in expansive future executive privilege claims.”
I find this so mysterious and, perhaps, a sign of conspiracy. Consider Lewandowski’s case. He was never an employee of the Executive Branch or of the Federal Government. So why should he be advised by White House lawyers? He has less right to their advice, it seems to me, than the White House custodial staff. All the world knows that Lewandowski’s ‘testimony’ is only one more act of obstruction of justice directed from above. More than anything else, Trump values secrecy. Why? All the world knows this too. And he has involved any number of public servants in a conspiracy to maintain secrecy, not about classified information, but about his crimes.
2) Can I discern another conspiracy in Trumpworld?
Trump has been working steadily to reinvigorate white supremacy in the U.S., to return us to a time when (Western) Europeans were sovereign, in effect, to re-Europeanize this country.
So I wonder if Trump’s policy of wholesale assault on environmental legislation and, thus, on the environment itself is a part of Europeanization. That is to say: he wants to return the U.S. to a time when greedy Europeans were encouraged to exploit our environment and allowed to do it lasting harm in their quest for Wealth, the only god in whom they really trusted. Of course, they did not exploit only the environment, but they massacred the animals and humans who were part of that environment. Indeed, they exploited even the poor of their own people whom they employed to plunder the environment and murder its residents. See Robert Doyle’s study Custer’s Last Irishman: The Irish who fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on the Wild Geese website (thewildgeese.irish/profiles/blogs/custer-s-last-irishmen), and you will know why the 7th Cavalry’s tune, the old Irish drinking song Garryowen is being suppressed.
18 IX 2019: Trump cannot shut his yap
I have seen two instances today in which Our Dictator would have done well to keep silence. He repeated a lie he picked up in the gutter, sc., from Terrence K. Williams. Trump retweeted a doctored videotape that, it was claimed, showed Rep. Ilhan Omar partying on the anniversary of 9/11. In fact (does this matter?), the party was on 9/13, an event sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus.
I want to know how Terrence K. Williams gets away with slandering Rep. Omar. I want to know how Trump can get away with slandering Rep. Omar. The President of the United States slanders a member of Congress on the basis of a forgery, and we just say “Ho, hum, there he goes again.”
Later Trump wasted spent several minutes at a spontaneous press conference bad-mouthing John Bolton. He went on at length, saying things about John Bolton half of which were either made up or based on his misunderstanding of something he once heard someone say.
You see, like Rep. Omar, John Bolton has been critical of Trump, and as with Rep. Omar, Trump cannot let it go. He reacts compulsively to anything he construes as a criticism or, heaven forbid, an insult. His angry-drunk personality takes over, and he must strike back, even if what he says is a conscious lie. He’s the kind of fellow who is not welcome at a family party, the kind of man who is no longer welcome at the bar, the kind of man who chronically, compulsively screws up his own life and the lives of all around him.
17 IX 2019: Got nuttin’ out of Corey!
Corey Lewandowski is said to be a Roman Catholic — how scandalous, abusive priests and Corey too!
He gave a bravura performance before the House committee today. He refused to answer questions put to him. How does he get away with that? They did not send him a subpoena because of his good looks or refined manners. Isn’t this refusal to cooperate, unless protected by “executive privilege” or the 5th Amendment, a basis for a Contempt of Congress citation?
But, of course, Corey doesn’t give a damn. He does not care at all what Congress thinks of him (assuming the Republicans have not quit thinking altogether), nor does does he care what the viewers in the television audience think of him — except for one viewer, Mr. Television himself, Donald Trump. I saw a good essay by Chris Cilizza that observes that for Lewandowski the hearing was not testimony, but a tryout for the Trumpteam.
I, at least, think Corey aced it. In one short hearing he showed that he can be arrogant, rude, dismissive of law and decency, generally trashy, and, above all, that he can lie with the best of them. I’m not the only one to be impressed. The Dictator tweeted a heartfelt “❤Thank you Corey!❤”
12 IX 2019: Illegalities and privileges for the few
Today CNN reported the following: “A lion trophy from Tanzania has been approved for import to the US, the first such case since lions began receiving protections in January 2016 as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, a conservation group says.” I wouldn’t call this news, although it is something I had not known before. But it is so damned predictable. Special deal arranged for over-rich playboy hunter to import illegal game trophy. It would have been news if permission had been denied.
Speaking of the marginally legal: The Supreme Court just gave the Trump Gang permission to break national and international law with its new requirement that anyone seeking asylum in the U.S. must first have sought asylum in a country through which he passed. I’m tempted to try to buy a piece of wasteland just across the Southern border, set up a new nation there, and require emigrants to apply for asylum as they pass through the gift shop. I guess the Trump Tools on the Supreme Court were singing for their supper on this one.
Also no-news is the announcement that the Trump EPA is going to allow monied people to pollute the water even more. Under the reign of Trump, the environment has received blow upon blow. A colleague once said to me of a university’s administration: “If you can think of anything dumber than what they are doing, send them a letter and they will adopt the suggestion.” I truly feel that if I think of something more destructive to the environment, more morally repugnant, more productive of poverty, more anti-democratic than what the Trump Team is doing, I could send it in an email and they would grab onto it.
11 IX 2019: Ego mendax vincit omnia
John Bolton has been made to walk the plank. I do not know Mr. Bolton. I gather from the news that he is a man of strong opinions and deeply held convictions. Hard to get along with, yes, bit of an extremist, maybe, deeply committed to the United States of America, no one doubts this.
I’m sure he used to put Trump in the shade from time to time. For Bolton is obviously the smarter and better informed, the logical thinker who is quite forward in expressing his own John Bolton has been made to walk the plank. I do not know Mr. Bolton. I gather from the news that he is a man of strong opinions and deeply held convictions. Hard to get along with, yes, bit of an extremist, maybe, deeply committed to the United States of America, no one doubts this.
I’m sure he used to put Trump in the shade from time to time, for Bolton is obviously the smarter and better informed, the logical thinker who is quite forward in expressing his own views, and quite forward too in denouncing contrary opinions. But on Trump’s playground, Trump is the only one who gets to be smart, well informed, and subtle, and Trump is the only player who is free to say what he thinks as loud as he wants. No, John Bolton had to go.
On the contrary, the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, the Vulture-King of Bankruptcy, is most welcome to stay. He is a man after the President’s heart. They have a shared background in bankruptcy and barely legal business doings, and both are adept and chronic liars. The ever-willing Wilbur will be with the President until the bitter end.
7 IX 2019: Who is the real author of NOAA’s announcement?
Today’s news reports the issue of an anonymous statement by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration that criticizes the National Weather Service’s announcement that Dorian posed absolutely no threat to the Great State of Alabama.
Why was this statement anonymous, i.e., not signed by anyone in the NDAA? I supose they couldn’t find any practiced liars from the Trump Organization in their agency. Maybe they had an intern write it. Why did they take so long issuing this corrective? Should we take it at all seriously?
Maybe the agency did in fact issue the statement, because NOAA did not want to have its budget reallocated to Homeland inSecurity. So they threw Trump a lifebuoy, even if suspiciously late.
OR, maybe it was not NOAA at all, but a Trumpian operative using NOAA letterhead. To test this hypothesis, I want to know first of all: Was the statement typewritten? or was it written with a Sharpie pen?
5 IX 2019: Sorry, King Cannot
There is an anecdote about the eleventh-century King Canute. His courtiers fawned on the old man, praising his dominion over land and sea. Canute ordered them to carry him to the far edge of the beach that had been exposed by the ebbing tide. He had them set his sedan chair right at the water’s edge and then commanded the sea not to get him wet. Of course, the incoming tide gave Canute a soaking and gave his courtiers a warning against exaggeration and flattery.
Our Ruler (some have called him King Con) is also surrounded by flatterers and yes-men. But unlike King Canute, he takes their flatteries at face value, for they coincide with his own self-evaluation. Trump recently got it into his head that Alabama was endangered. He called it “the great state of Alabama,” a characteristic phrase of George Wallace’s.
Where did he get Alabama? At least we know that it was not from the U.S. Weather Service. But whether he had earlier overheard someone mention Alabama in another context, or thought up Alabama’s peril all on his own, he has been sticking to his guns and even conjured up a Weather Service map that had been clumsily falsified to show Dorian menacing Alabama.
Why did he mention Alabama? Perhaps he was trying to play-act the “Empathetic President” and show the depth of his concern for Alabama. According to the latest U.S. News evaluative comparison of the 51 states, Alabama comes in at the 46th place in health care, 45th in economy, and 50th in education. So support for Trump in Alabama runs very deep. Or did he make his mistaken statement only because he was feeling expansive and wanted to show how supremely well-informed he was about a coming national emergency.
In any case, whatever he scribbled on the Weather Service map, even Mr. Trump cannot make a storm blow to the West if it does not want to. Unlike King Canute, who was quite ready to admit he had no dominion over nature, Trump was asserting his dominion, not over nature, but over information about nature. He knew where the storm was going, just as he knows that Climate Change is bogus.
4 IX 2019: Ubi caritas?
Nicolas Senèze of La Croix has presented his new book, How America Wants to Change Popes, to Pope Francis. The Holy Father’s response was a comment: “For me it is an honor that Americans attack me.” There are various conjectures about the meaning of this remark. I am inclined to read it through the lens of Matthew 5:12: “Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you.”
I hope that M. Senèze’sbook will name names and follow the money, so that we can know who is who in the little known American Catholic right. Catholic reactionaries have been engaged in a long-standing conspiracy against Pope Francis, and I would like to know who they are. They are probably the same rich authoritarians that fund the Republican Party and a throng of right-wing Catholic organizations.
The right-wingers are loud in their denunciations, but are, especially the wealthy ones, rather closed-mouth about the goals of their various conspiracies. Their favorite drink, politics aged-in-the-barrel with a religion chaser, very often induces paranoia. Hence the smoke, and fog, confusion and camouflage. The Catholic right in America stands in need of bright light and fresh air. Otherwise our assumption that they are merely chaplains of capitalism will go unchallenged.