26 IX 2019: Trump’s behavior no surprise

Unlike some, anyway, I am not at all surprised that Trump abused his office for his own political gain. Corrupt behavior is who Trump is. If he were to act honestly, without self-interest, and faithful to his duties as President, that would be a surprise, just as it would be astonishing if he were ever to speak the truth consciously and willingly.

Trump and Trumpworld are so narrow and corrupt that I can at least imagine that maybe Trump really thinks he’s done nothing wrong. Don’t all winners practice extortion and regard as their own what others have entrusted to them? But no, Trump is not so naive. He is a semi-criminal, one of a class of people who have contempt for the laws and think people who obey them are chumps. He and his enablers knew he committed a crime and took immediate steps to conceal it, like a cat hiding its feces.

Semi-criminals have standard responses to stress, like “If you get caught, lie about it and keep lying.” Trump and his winged-monkey, Rudi, have not stopped telling lies for several days now, and will keep on telling lies as long as anyone will listen to them. 

His Trumpites are firing a copious and varied barrage of disinformation in their Leader’s defense, lies calculated to deceive and tall-tales intended to distract. The Trumpworld cares only about appearances and impressions, and in the Trumpworld the truth is considered the greatest threat. 

25 IX 2019 bis: Strict control and courage can prevent circus-hearing

A piece in The Daily Beast by Mr. Sam Brody, the Beast’s Congressional Reporter, bore the summary headline: “Dems Worry Rudy Would Send Impeachment Hearing Off the Rails.” Well, yes. That garrulous old liar has created so much uproar and chaos on TV shows that I’m amazed that they keep asking him to return. Yet there he is, all the time, with his grimaces and grins, talking like a prize-fight promoter, and telling one whopper after another unless he is stopped. And, yes, he is hard to stop, because he has no manners at all.

I came away from the Corey Lewandowski hearing feeling pessimistic about future hearings. Members of Congress, Chairs of Committees need to rouse themselves and shut down the delaying tactics and derisive behavior of their colleagues. They need to make witnesses either answer the questions or face a citation for Contempt of Congress. Our institutions must be less indulgent and tolerant when dealing with practiced liars and swindlers. Mad-dog partisanship and a high tolerance for foolery have made a mockery of the oversight role of Congress. Congress must resume this role with grave and determined energy if our democracy is to survive.

25 IX 2019: It’s nota transcript

AS Michael Tomasky points out on Dailybeast, the document released by Teamtrump is not really a transcript of the conversation between Trump and Zelensky. It is, I’ve read, a summary of notes taken by White House officials listening in on the call. The document indicates that the conversation lasted 30 minutes, and they have come up with a 1992-word version of it. Were they speaking that slowly? A summary that is a verbatim record is a failed summary. Or, if the document is to be regarded as a transcription of the conversation, it is a very partial, and therefore selective, transcription. Were the White House officials taking the conversation down in shorthand? Or was their “transcription” based on a recording of the conversation? The latter seems more likely, for I’m sure that a conversation between heads of state would be recorded entire on both ends. In any case, the editors managed to squeeze thirty minutes into less than 1992 words that convey not very much of real substance. If this is at all a true version of the conversation between these two leaders, then taxpayers of the U.S. and of Ukraine should make Trump and Zelensky pay for the call themselves.

This document is not an authentic account of the conversation between the two heads of state, but a doctored version put together from meaningless remarks of Zelensky and statements of Trump that stop just short of “you give me the dirt and I’ll give you the money.” 

The portrait of Trump in the transcript seems true-to-life: impolite, a braggart, unable to refrain from re-living past real or imagined slights, and unable to see the difference between himself and the United States. If the portrait of Zelensky that emerges is true-to-life, then heaven help Ukraine! But I suspect that Zelensky’s smarmy gratitude, unbounded admiration, and whole-hearted agreement with Trump are White House confections.

24 IX 2019: Media gangbang

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.