Month: September 2019

The Trump swamp gets murkier every day


by digby

My Salon column this morning:

So President Trump had a normal weekend. He tweeted repeatedly about his mistake telling Alabama they were in the path of Hurricane Dorian, insisting that it wasn’t a mistake at all. The controversy grew into something quite serious when it became obvious that he was ordering a Rear Admiral for fall on his sword and take responsibility and have political appointees at NOAA say his lie was actually the truth. Orwell has been mentioned. A lot.

Then the president had an angry twitter tantrum on Saturday night announcing that he was canceling a secret meeting scheduled for Sunday morning with the Taliban at Camp David.

….an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people. I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position? They didn’t, they….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019

….only made it worse! If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019

According to this tick-tock in the NY Times he had decided to inject himself into the later stages of the negotiation with this Camp David gambit but it was upended by his egomaniacal desire to one-up Jimmy Carter and get credit for a big peace deal without having the first clue what he was doing or understanding the stakes. One of the parties he was for his photo-op was anathema to the Taliban so they balked and then the whole thing fell apart supposedly when Trump suddenly realized that the Taliban was still killing people. Nobody can quite figure out why he tweeted it out. One gets the feeling that he doesn’t know why he did it either.

Those two stories dominated the news this weekend, but there was another brewing that will, if the Democrats do what they say they’re going to do, come into focus starting this week. The committees are reconvening and there has been some new reporting that indicates they have more information about Trump’s corruption than has been made public.

A couple of weeks ago I wondered if President Trump wasn’t hedging his bets a little bit on 2020 by accelerating the usual promotional activities for his properties. On some level he must know that he’s vulnerable sees that his window using his power to benefit himself may be closing. But the last week we’ve received even more evidence that he’s been quite successful at dipping his beak ever since he became president.

Last Friday Politico reported that the House has been investigating a strange incident in which the Air Force made an unusual stop at a small government-owned airport in Scotland for refueling that just happened to be next to Trump’s failing golf course in Turnberry. The crew was quite befuddled at their order to stop there and even more so when they ended up at Trump’s pricey club, feeling out of place and without even having enough per diem money to buy food and drink. It was, to say the least, unexpected.

The reporting shows that many millions of dollars were spent since 2017 at this odd, out-of-the way little airport and more than just those airmen were shuttled to Turnberry to put government money in Trump’s pocket. The Guardian reported that that the airport gives complimentary rounds of golf and rooms at a discount to some of the military member who stay at Turnberry, which indicates it’s a thing.

It would be highly unlikely that Trump would have given an order to do this. As Mike Pence’s spokesman said when the VP was criticized for staying at Turnberry on his recent trip to Ireland, he just “suggests” it. More likely people just know that pleasing the president by putting money in his pocket is smart politics. He does love money.

It may be that this is not technically illegal. But it certainly appears to be massively unethical, especially if what the Guardian reports about the Scottish government involvement turns out to be true:

An investigation by the Guardian has revealed Glasgow Prestwick airport is a base for live missions by the US Air Force, while its executives have highlighted its close relations with President Trump’s nearby resort at Turnberry to promote its bid to become a spaceport backed by the US government.

The Scottish government knew all about this, apparently, during the period Trump was running as well as since he’s been president.  If anyone still cared about the constitution, that emoluments clause would quite clearly be in play here. From the looks of it, that clause is only in effect for presidents who take bags of cash in a paper bag from a foreign potentate. Other than that it is no longer operative and presidents are now allowed to take as much money as foreign governments can flow into the businesses they refused to divest when they became president. If he isn’t already a businessman, the next Republican president will have to set up some pass-through corporations so that he too can legally receive bribes from foreign governments.

Politico reported on Sunday that the Air Force was conducting a full review of the process after “additional instances of military personnel staying at Trump properties have been uncovered.” But Air Force personnel aren’t the only ones putting taxpayer money into Donald Trump’s Turnberry coffers. The Statesman reported in 2018 that the State Department had paid for staffers to stay at the resort and the family members’ Secret Service details routinely spend tens of thousands at the family hotels when their charges travel, Turnberry included.

But that’s nothing compared to the money that Republican officials foreign dignitaries and fans spend at the Trump hotels, the profits from which go directly into the president’s pockets. Nobody knows exactly how much money is being spent, but it’s in the tens of millions. The New York Times reported over the weekend:

Since Mr. Trump became president, there have been thousands of visits to his properties, not only by Mr. Trump himself, but by foreign leaders, lobbyists, Republican candidates, members of Congress, cabinet members and others with ties to the president. At least 90 members of Congress, 250 Trump administration officials and more than 110 foreign officials have been spotted at Trump properties since 2017, according to social media posts and counts by various watchdog groups.

That is undoubtedly a low estimate. And nobody knows how much money has really been spent. Some are looking for favors, some probably just want to be seen and some simply want to give the president money because they love him so much:

“President Trump has really been on the side of the evangelicals and we want to do everything we can to make him successful,” said Sharon Bolan Yerby, an evangelical minister from Dallas, who had dinner at the hotel last fall, and then headed over to the White House the next day for a “faith briefing” of religious leaders. “And if that means having dinner or staying in his hotel, we are going to do so.”

This is corruption in plain sight by Republicans, lobbyists, foreign dignitaries and supporters. Trump excuses it by saying that People just like his “product” and anyway, he’s actually lost 3-5 million on this president deal. How can anyone object if he makes a few measly million from people who appreciate his greatness?

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The first election of 2020
by Tom Sullivan

Unfortunate juxtaposition (top). Republican booth at Mountain State Fair on Sunday, Buncombe County, NC.

The first election of 2020 is the last one of 2018. It’s September 10 this year. Tomorrow.

Low-turnout elections leave pollsters scratching their heads. The NC-9 do-over election is no exception. Still-incomplete from 2018, the contest will be final on Tuesday unless a recount or other wrinkle extends the race yet again. Democrats have not held the congressional seat since the 1960s. Donald Trump in 2016 won the district by 12 points.

Nevertheless, state Sen. Dan Bishop (R-“bathroom bill”) and Iraq war veteran Dan McCready (D) have been in a neck-and-neck fight in the R+8 district for months. Then Hurricane Dorian came calling. The state Board of Elections extended voting in the coastal NC-3 special election to replace Walter Jones who died in February (R+12, and not considered competitive for Democrats) and in the eastern counties of NC-9 which runs from the Charlotte suburbs to Fayetteville. Results are as unpredictable as the acting president who has scheduled a rally there Monday night. Unless Air Force One lands in Alabama.

“This is a pretty Republican district,” former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va told WUNC. If Bishop loses, NC-9 is “not a seat you’ll be able to explain away very well,” meaning Trump is losing the suburbs. But Republican early voting is down relative to this point in 2018. EQV Analytics reports turnout by registered Democrats is up 50%.

Bishop has tied himself at the hip to Donald Trump and, if elected, pledges to become his faithful attack dog. One Bishop ad quotes Trump branding McCready (a Democratic moderate) an “ultra liberal” who likes open borders and “really admires socialism,” claims Politifact North Carolina brands “Pants on Fire!” McCready has worked to distance himself from the party’s headliners, Medicare for All and a ban on assault weapons.

Dr. Michael Bitzer, history and politics professor at Catawba College who blogs at Old North State Politics, tells Politifact, “First, it was tying all Democratic candidates to Nancy Pelosi in 2018 to try to lower their favorability. Then, with the president going after AOC and the Squad, guilt by association has become a standard mantra for Republican campaigns.”

While McCready has enjoyed a fundraising advantage, Politico reports that national Republicans are stepping in to close the gap:

The toss-up race between Bishop and McCready is already the second-most expensive special election for a House seat in U.S. history. And the GOP is going all-out to keep the seat, which has been held by Republicans since the 1960s, in the party’s hands: Between House Republicans’ official campaign arm and the top pro-GOP super PAC, Republicans have boosted Bishop with more than $5 million in outside spending.

McCready holds his own rally Monday afternoon in Fayetteville hours before the president’s scheduled 7 p.m. rally.

The Taliban should have sent a beautiful letter

by digby

I don’t know what went on there, but it’s very, very strange. In fact, I think we can easily just assume that it’s bullshit.

And let’s just say that this doesn’t exactly clear it up:

Pompeo on Meet The Press: "You should know, in the last 10 days we've killed over 1,000 Taliban. And while this is not a war of attrition, I want the American people to know that President Trump is taking it to the Taliban." pic.twitter.com/dXxQwzrYkD— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 8, 2019

This is some pretty ghoulish stuff coming from the Secretary of State pic.twitter.com/bDlshrS2yW— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 8, 2019

Listen to this clip while reminding yourself that Pompeo is talking about the same people Trump invited to Camp David. #incoherent https://t.co/H2zOTFrb5x— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 8, 2019

The fact that the president tweeting out a temper tantrum about a supposed secret meeting with the Taliban at Camp David that was scheduled for the next day being canceled isn’t even considered weird is astonishing enough. That he thought this would be a good idea in the first place is simply gobsmacking. Presumably, he wanted to have the Taliban leaders around for the 9/11 commemorations so he could do some sort of Kim Jong Un photo-op and declare the Taliban a lovely group of guys who are looking to build some condos in Kabul.

Unfortunately for him, they don’t seem to understand the way to Trump’s heart is to kiss his ass first and save the violence for later when he will defend them in order to save face.

I am not one to believe we must “win” in these foreign wars. I’m not sure what that even means. But I do think we must try to work with a legitimate government and prevent our departure from turning into a killing field for people who were our friends and allies.

The Taliban is killing human rights activists even as they negotiate one-on-one with the US:

#Taliban beheaded Abdul Samad Amiri, acting director of human rights commission in Ghor province, local media reports say. Samad, a well-known human rights defender in central AF, was abducted in Jalrez district of Wardak province two days ago when he was on his way to Ghor. pic.twitter.com/cEpCzkTdev— Sharif Hassan (@MSharif1990) September 5, 2019

Maybe if Trump were willing to accept any who wants to come as refugees that might be one way of mitigating the danger. But I think it’s pretty clear that’s not going to happen.

Obviously, we can’t occupy the country forever. But there’s no doubt that it’s risky to allow the place to become a breeding ground for ISIS and al Qaeda (again) because that inevitably leads to even more war and probably invasions if they manage to pull off a major terrorist attack. It’s a difficult problem to solve, to say the least.

Certainly, no negotiation can possibly be useful if Trump is on one side of it because he’s the worst negotiator in history. And unlike the debacle with North Korea you can’t even say, “well any day without a nuclear war is good” to justify the bromance that is allowing Kim to build missile systems that are threatening his neighbors and are likely to lead to a nuclear arms race in Asia. Abruptly leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban will almost certainly lead to a bloodbath.

Peace talks are good as long as they include international partners, and the Afghan government. Trump involved is bad. And from the looks of it Pompeo isn’t much better although he might be talking like a bloodthirsty freak in order to appease Dear Leader. But I don’t think anything that happened this weekend is what they are saying happened. Trump wanted to “take credit” for walking away after it was obvious that they had already failed.

It’s cute that Republicans are all saying today that the Taliban shouldn’t ever be allowed to spend time at some place like that and that Trump is strong and powerful for canceling the meeting — conveniently overlooking the fact that he’s the one who invited them. But it isn’t the way things should be done. These sorts of talks should be on neutral ground and the president shouldn’t go anywhere near them until a deal is fully vetted and signed off on by all the parties. I think what happened was that Trump just wanted his “Nobel Peace Prize” photo op so he jumped the gun and then somebody brought it to his attention that blowing up American soldiers wouldn’t be a big seller as a way to get him to retreat.

This has all the markings of another one of his impulsive moves. He doesn’t know what he’s doing so he’s making everything worse. It’s hard to see how anyone could do that with Afghanistan but Trump is a unique talent.

This seems like a smart analysis of the situation although I don’t honestly know if there’s any good answer here.

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The political argument for impeachment

by digby

The most compelling reason is that Trump is a criminal. But there is a practical political argument as well. Jonathan Alter is anything but a Resistance Warrior type of guy. He’s a Villager to his core. If he’s arguing for impeachment it means something:

Judging from its disappearance from the headlines, impeaching President Trump seems like it will be consigned to the back burner when the House reconvenes next week. Not so. Over the break, a dozen more Democrats came out in favor, bringing the number to 131, and Rep. Jerrold Nadler said an impeachment inquiry might begin in late fall, after hearings this month and next.

The pooh-bahs of the House leadership are proceeding cautiously. One of them rightly told me last week that the worst thing they could do would be to lose an impeachment vote. They need a majority of the House—217 Democrats (plus independent Justin Amash)—which means they must gather at least 87 more commitments by the end of the year. There are currently 235 Democrats.

Can they get there? (Any later than early 2020 and it’s too close to the election). The party line is Democratic members will do their duty and look at the evidence, which Trump is fighting furiously in court to withhold. This argument is partly legit (it’s important to build a public case) but mostly window-dressing. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the moderates already know that the man obstructed justice, abuses power every day, and is clearly unfit for office.

What’s holding them back is a faulty analysis of the politics of impeachment. They’re still caught in the grips of myopic conventional wisdom about the way the whole thing would actually play out in a trial in the Senate.

Recall that in the July 31 debate, Sen. Michael Bennet repeated the familiar argument that the Senate will not remove Trump from office. If the House impeaches him, Bennet said, Trump “would be running saying that he had been acquitted by the United States Congress.”

Julian Castro shot back: “If they don’t impeach him, he’s going to say, ‘You see? You see? The Democrats didn’t go after me on impeachment, and you know why? Because I didn’t do anything wrong.’”

Conversely, Castro continued, if the House impeaches Trump, the public would conclude that “his friend, Mitch McConnell, Moscow Mitch, let him off the hook.”

Castro’s argument was so persuasive that Bennet did something you never, ever see in a debate—he changed his mind on stage: “I don’t disagree with that. You just said it better than I did. We have to walk and chew gum at the same time.”

Walking and chewing gum at the same time—a useful cliché—usually means in this context legislating and investigating Trump simultaneously. But it could also mean something else: attacking Trump and McConnell at the same time. It may be that a winning Democratic impeachment strategy is coming into view, one that simultaneously upholds the rule of law and yields political dividends.

I call it “Stain and Blame”—stain Trump by impeaching him, and blame McConnell when he is acquitted in the Senate.

Yes! This is exactly right!

Alter then goes into the Clinton impeachment and is right on in his analysis, pointing out the obvious: it didn’t hurt the Republicans, not really. It hurt the Democrats when George W. Bush ran on “restoring honor and dignity to the White House” in 2000.
The people who constantly talk about how Clinton gained popularity when he was impeached consistently forget that he was already popular. Impeaching a popular president is just a teensy bit different than impeaching a popular one. But he wasn’t on the ballot two years later in 2000, and the people took it out on Al Gore.

This time, the trial in the well of the Senate would be presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts, who, like Rehnquist, would run it like a quasi-trial, with evidence, witnesses (who would likely appear in person) and summations. Nadler and others from the House Judiciary Committee would serve as prosecutors. Trump would have private lawyers defending him. The senators would be the jury.

It would be Roberts’ job to make sure the rules are followed, which means the prosecution and defense must stick to the indictment—the articles of impeachment approved by the House. McConnell would not have the 60 votes needed to change those rules or dismiss the motion to consider the articles.

This necessity of adhering to the articles of impeachment has received no discussion. But it is crucial to understanding how a Senate trial would actually go. Recall Robert Mueller’s testimony. With the exception of Reps. John Ratcliffe and Louie Gohmert, no Republicans tried to claim Trump did not commit obstruction of justice.

Instead, they changed the subject to Fusion GPS, the Steele dossier, and other counter-charges irrelevant to what would be at issue in a Senate trial. Except in the defense’s opening argument and summation, these distractions would likely not be allowed during the bulk of the Senate trial, televised for tens of millions.

“Despite his acquittal, impeachment—a convenient shorthand for all of his despicable qualities—would be wrung around Donald Trump’s neck all the way to Election Day.”
Think about the defense that Trump would be compelled to mount. His trial lawyers would have the unenviable task of shooting down at least eight clear examples of obstruction of justice outlined in the Mueller Report, plus explain why Trump did not abuse and disgrace his office and obstruct Congress (other likely articles of impeachment). They would have to explain why it was perfectly okay for Trump to feather his own nest by directing his people to stay at Trump hotels, after promising he would not tend to his businesses in the White House. (That article of impeachment could fall under either abuse of power or violation of the emoluments clause).

The point is, Trump would be flayed every day for the duration of the short trial—hardly helpful to his re-election. Meanwhile, vulnerable Republican incumbents from blue states like Cory Gardner and Susan Collins would face a very tough vote. To save their seats, they might be forced to vote for conviction, which would hurt Trump even more in battleground states.

I don’t know that they would but it would certainly put their seats in jeopardy either way. That’s a good thing.

And Alter is right about this too:

Now contrast this with what would happen if the House decides not to impeach Trump. Without a trial, the whole thing goes in the rear view mirror, except whenever Trump wants to fling it in the Democrats’ face.

Beyond acquittal in the Senate, the other conventional argument against impeachment made by House moderates in swing districts is that they want to campaign in 2020 as they did in 2018–on real issues that people care about, like health care.

That would be a good point if Democrats were stressing Trump’s failure to protect people with preexisting conditions—a big issue in the midterms. But that argument received zero attention in the recent presidential debates, which showed that the more Democrats discuss health care, the more divided and impractical they look. And impeachment would hardly prevent Democrats from returning to smart health care arguments after the primaries.

A related piece of conventional wisdom is that impeachment and a Senate trial would open Democrats up to the charge—already being made by the GOP against pro-impeachment House members—that they are not working for their constituents.

But if the Clinton case is any indication, a week-long Senate trial would wrap up only a month or so after impeachment. That means the whole thing would be over in January or February. The Democrats could shower blame on McConnell for the acquittal and move on. By summer, Democratic members would have had plenty of time to refocus their attention on constituent concerns. No Republican challenger can credibly argue in October of 2020 that the incumbent Democrat ignored constituents for a brief period 10 months earlier while he or she voted for impeachment. People can’t remember what happened two weeks ago, much less 10 months ago.

With one exception: The impeachment of the President. The memories of that are long. Despite his acquittal, impeachment—a convenient shorthand for all of his despicable qualities—would hang around Donald Trump’s neck all the way to Election Day. And he would be stained forever in history, his just desserts.

And consider that Trump won’t be able to resist screeching “witch hunt!” every single day, remining everyone in the country that he is running as president who was impeached and protected from conviction by his accomplices in the Senate.

Is it risky? Sure, anything can happen. But I have never understood this notion that Trump will gain power from being impeached. It’s ridiculous. I realize that a lot of the media have simply assumed that since Clinton was acquitted and remained popular that it’s a losing strategy. But this isn’t about a couple of furtive blow jobs. The stakes in this are much, much more like Watergate, even higher when you consider the act that this president welcomed the sabotage of his opponent’s election campaign by a foreign adversary and provably (and openly!) obstructed justice to cover it up. Also, the monumental corruption. The sheer volume of impeachable offenses is enormous.

I suppose a majority of the public may say that they realized this behavior is exactly what they yearn for in a president and they can’t wait for four more years after the congress lays it all out in one big case. If so, we have much, much bigger problems. And we might.

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The best bootlicker in the Trump orbit is …

by digby

Brad Parscale!

President Donald Trump’s campaign manager predicted Saturday that the president and his family will become “a dynasty that will last for decades,” transforming the Republican Party while hewing to conservative values.

[He was s]peaking to a convention of Republican Party delegates in Indian Wells, California….

“The Trumps will be a dynasty that will last for decades, propelling the Republican Party into a new party,” he said. “One that will adapt to changing cultures. One must continue to adapt while keeping the conservative values that we believe in.”

Parscale later declined to elaborate on his prediction of a coming Trump “dynasty,” or whether the president’s children could become candidates for public office.

He told reporters after the speech, “I just think they are a dynasty. I think they are all amazing people with … amazing capabilities.”

This isn’t just idle fluffing the golden goose although it surely helps. (His entire future depends on the Trump family.) Other Republicans believe the same thing. Never Trumper Rick Wilson thinks it’s plausible:

There are three 2024 scenarios that Republicans pretend they won’t face, but that represent the further decline and fall of a once-great party of conservative ideas.

First, the clues have been there all along that the real 2024 primary will be between Donald J. Trump, Jr. and everyone else. It’s becoming more obvious by the day; the Trump princeling has been on the road doing fundraising and political events for Republican candidates, he’s a favorite of the friendly friends at Fox & Friends, and his new book, Triggered, is coming out soon. He is fluent in the language of whining, dickish grievance-mongering, which has replaced modern conservatism.

This erudite tome is considered one of the most consequential and powerful books on conservatism since… oh, who am I kidding? Expect the usual pastiche of large-print, sub-Fox-level agitprop screeching in a slim volume that will be sold in bulk and appear on tables at garage sales within the year, spines intact. Whether the GOP wannabe 2024 field knows it or not, it’s DJTJ’s opening shot for the 2024 nomination.

For GOP candidates who think they’re going to finesse this one somehow, or blow up Trump Jr. in 2024, may I remind you of the hell of 2016? This time, the cult you fear so much will listen to its leader and support the dynasty. Trump’s royal fantasies won’t wait, and no matter how much any other GOP candidate has polished Donald Trump’s knob in the past years, he’ll throw them under the bus for his spawn.

The second 2024 headwind comes in the scenario of a Democrat actually winning in 2020. The 2024 Trump Party candidate will not only face an incumbent Democratic president, but one who was specifically elected on a referendum against Donald Trump and his philosophy and record. Caught between the pincers of winning the Republican primary and competing in the general election against the Democratic nominee, every single one of these candidates will spend the year before the election posturing and posing as the sole heir to Donald Trump’s legacy.

Making the pivot to the general election won’t just be difficult; it will be laughable. Imagine trying to make the jump from “I would let Donald Trump dry hump my wife in broad daylight if he would tweet something nice about me” to the era of “Trump has passed and I will lead a Republican party as it seeks to bring all Americans together as one to face the great national challenges ahead of us.”

Listen, guys. If you’re that flexible try out for the Olympic men’s gymnastics team and leave politics to the rest of us.

If only.

He also brings up the idea that if Trump loses in 2020 he may very well run again in 2024.

He’ll only be 78, a veritable spring chicken. And you can bet he’ll do everything he can to keep the Trump cult together, including a full court press by the Republicans to pretend that the election was stolen by the Democrats with the help of the Chinese. They’re already preparing.

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Warren has him worried

by digby

It turns out that his juvenile nickname didn’t do the trick this time:

It’s been 131 days since Donald Trump bragged that he killed Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign by mocking her claim to Cherokee ancestry, but her candidacy is more alive than ever. The Democratic senator tripled her fundraising haul last quarter, is commanding massive crowds, crushing the debates, and has settled into a comfortable third place in primary state polling, putting pressure on Bernie Sanders. The “Pocahontas” slur, Republican insiders fear, isn’t cutting it.

Several strategists tell the Daily Beast that Trump was caught off guard by the resonance of Warren’s populist rhetoric—a skill set that in some ways mirrors his own,[bullshit, bullshit,bullshit —digby] minus the mental effluvia and human rights violations—and said she might be “tougher” to compete against than he realized, repeatedly asking advisers whether they consider Warren to be a “fighter.”

Others confessed that, despite their best efforts to comb her record for dirt and to workshop attacks, the GOP oppo machine has been struggling to land any blows. Sure, some of Warren’s proposals are pie-in-the-sky, and maybe the math is hazy, but have you listened to Donald Trump? One strategist suggested that conservative think tanks have been struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of white papers Warren has been generating.

It doesn’t help that anti-Warren stories haven’t gotten as much pickup in the media, mainstream or otherwise. “We all push out the bad Warren stories but they don’t go very far,” the source said—a point echoed by nearly a dozen others. “Sure the Republican base will ultimately loathe Warren, but she doesn’t inspire the same kind of historic vitriol that Hillary Clinton did,” one of the strategists told the Beast. “That, combined with fact that SCOTUS isn’t on the line as it was in ’16, and remembering that Trump needed the perfect inside straight to barely win last time, and any Democrat is going to be tough to beat, Warren included.”

I think he has already telegraphed one line of attack:

Could you imagine having Sleepy Joe Biden, or Alfred E. Newman or a very nervous and skinny version of Pocahontas (1/1024th), as your President, rather than what you have now, so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius! Sorry to say that even Social Media would be driven out of business along with, and finally, the Fake News Media!

Yes, he actually tweeted that.

I would assume that the Republican strategists are all begging him to attack her policies if she does win the nomination. But he’s incapable of that. He doesn’t understand policies and doesn’t care about them anyway. He could attack her on trade but he’ll have to lie outright in a way that won’t resonate with the people who pay attention to that issue.

And anyway, that’s not his style. He will go after her personally. And he has a feral instinct for how to scratch the misogynist id so I’d expect it to be about her looks and her personality in a way that will speak to the many men in this country (and, sadly, women who love them) who simply can’t stand the idea of a woman leader. But I don’t think it has the resonance that it had with Clinton. She had been a target of the right-wing for 25 years and that had taken its toll even on people who were ostensibly on the same side of the partisan divide. Warren doesn’t come with that baggage.

I have no idea who will win the nomination. If it’s one of the women, gender will be a factor. But they all have their vulnerabilities, including the white guys. Trump only knows how to run using character assassination and he truly enjoys it, as do his followers. He will depend on voter suppression and outside help, possibly foreign, as well. The question will be if the electorate is as gullible as they were in 2016.

All the candidates are subject to his personal insults and considering how much his personality has been degraded over the course of his presidency so far, I’m going to guess they will be even more disgusting than before. They are all surely aware that it’s going to be the dirtiest most revolting campaign in history.

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The good news is that we don’t have to ever listen to a word they say in the future

by digby

Republican officials have made it clear that they just don’t give a damn about ethics or honesty, if they ever did. They will insist in the future that they do and they’ll wring their hands and scream to high heavens about Democrats failures and alleged dishonesty.

DEMOCRATS SHOULD REPLY OVER AND OVER AGAIN:  “Two words: Donald Trump.”

TODD: Before I go, should the American public take the president at his word when he speaks?
BLUNT: Well, the president communicated differently than anybody else…

TODD: You’ve said that before.

BLUNT: As a candidate…

TODD: He’s president of the United States. You know… he’s politicizing the weather. I mean, is there anything left?

BLUNT: Well, I actually… I’ve spent most of this month at home in Missouri, and I don’t… I think this whole Sharpie thing is way being overplayed. I don’t think it will matter election day. I don’t think it matters to most people.

TODD: But are you worried that the credibility of the words of the president of the United States has been eroded?

BLUNT: No.

TODD: Okay. Senator Roy Blunt, Republican from Missouri, member of leadership, thanks for coming in. It’s good to see you.

You know he doesn’t believe that. He’s lying. Therefore, the credibility of the words of the Republican leadership are equally eroded, if not more. Trump is very dumb and psychologically damaged. These people are just cowards.

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Hope small
by Tom Sullivan

Hurricane Dorian’s grim aftermath in the Bahamas, the expected worsening effects of climate change, and both institutional and mental breakdowns in Washington, D.C. cannot but help but foster a sense of impending doom. Natural disasters we have seen before. A major political party led by one and dedicated to magnifying his impact is something new.

But out of the darkness shine beams of light here and there. South Florida is mobilizing to send relief to the Bahamas. A World War II Douglas C-47 Skytrain that dropped Allied paratroopers into France 75 years ago is ferrying supplies to tempest-tossed Bahamians.

“Florida man” is often a punchline, but an unidentified one strolled into a Jacksonville, Florida Costco on Wednesday and left with 100 generators and bulk foods totaling $49,000 for Grand Bahama and Abaco. All CNN reported is he is a farmer.

At New Yorker, Jonathan Franzen paints a depressing portrait of a coming climate apocalypse abetted by our human need for denial as well as by financial markets with a rudder comparable to Titanic’s. (Don’t read it before you’ve had your coffee.) Averting catastrophe at this point is only theoretically possible. Rather than entertain false ones, Franzen recommends “a more balanced portfolio of hopes” and in addition to efforts on global challenges fighting smaller, “smaller, more local battles that you have some realistic hope of winning.” For your community. For wild spaces.

There, too, is where James Fallows finds hope: in local innovations that succeed where global ones falter. Philip Zelikow, once worked in national security posts for both Presidents Bush and is now Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Zelikow believes there is more cultural signaling going on today inside the Beltway than actual policy. Where change is really happening is locally “where people have no choice but to solve problems week by week.” People like South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

This assessment aligns with Fallows’ observations from his “Our Towns” series. The collapse of Rome, fragmentation of power, he ponders (citing others), opened space for local developments that, over time, birthed the modern world.

But not so fast, says his friend, Eric Schnurer. The Dark Ages really were dark. Big structural changes, he argues, always come from the accumulation of smaller efforts. Rapid upheaval rarely works out well.

Schnurer responds:

The enlightening place to look is always local. If you want to know where the world is headed, you need to find the unknown lunatics toiling away in a lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, or a patent office in Basel, or a garage in Menlo Park, California, or the mayor’s office in South Bend—not what the world leaders and experts are saying … I don’t know if finding what people are up to should be encouraging of optimism—I mean, some local innovation includes some bizarre people meeting in Munich beer halls who a decade later launch WWII—but it’s instructive …

Local is where most people always choose to get involved: It’s not just the current dysfunctionality that channels most people into school-board meetings instead of seeking to draft new national legislation. Some small number of crazy people like you and me are drawn to the latter, but that’s a distinct minority, always has been, and always will be.

My work has brought me into contact with people all around the country who were thinking about productive little ideas about how to improve their neighborhoods, their kid’s school, their small business and how it affected their workers, etc. … My contribution has been largely in recognizing them and thinking, Hey, that would make a great basis for a “program” that my candidate could propose, scale up, and fund as governor!

People who read ancient blogs like this one are not normal. Normal people don’t spend their weekend in campaign school, Democracy for America’s Arshad Hasan said in the first one I attended. But online communities function as networked localities for nurturing new ideas that, Schnurer argues, could become the foundation for a post-empire, new normal. Change is only scary until it isn’t.

Sure, the entire world as we know it being wiped away sounds scary, but it’s not necessarily “awful.” If you told people in the 13th century about the world today—family, church, village, political overlord, entire basis of the economy, entire intellectual framework (“Evolution?” “Relativity?” “Quantum mechanics?”), all as you knew them completely gone—they’d think that 100 percent awful. But do you know a single person who would rather be living in the 13th century than today?

No, but growing up I always figured the 21st would be more like Tomorrowland. For Bahamians and many Pacific Islanders it’s looking more like Mad Max or Waterworld.

Saturday Night at the Movies

Monsters from the id: Tigers Are Not Afraid (***) & Spirit of the Beehive (****)

By Dennis Hartley

Suffer not the little children: Still from Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

Is there an echo in here? Still from Tigers Are Not Afraid (2019)

In my 2009 review of Where the Wild Things Are, I wrote:

Childhood is a magical time. Well, at least until the Death of Innocence…whenever that is supposed to occur. At what point DO we slam the window on Peter Pan’s fingers? When we stop believing in faeries? That seems to be the consensus, in literature and in film.

In Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire” only children “see” the angels. Even when the fantastical pals are more tangible, the adults in the room keep their blinders on. In Stephen Spielberg’s “E.T.”, Mom doesn’t initially “see” her children’s little alien playmate, even when she’s seemingly gawking right at him. […]

Somewhere in the course of this long dark night of his 9 year-old soul, in the midst of a panicky attempt to literally flee from his own actions, [the protagonist of “Where The Wild Things Are”] Max crosses over from Reality into Fantasy (even children need to bleed the valve on the “pressure cooker of life”). […] 

Max washes up on the shore of a mysterious island where he finds that he suddenly can not only wrestle with his inner demons but run and jump and laugh and play with them as well. These strange and wondrous manifestations are the literal embodiment of the “wild things” inside of him that drive his complex emotional behaviors; anthropomorphic creatures that also pull double duty as avatars for the people who are closest to him.

Growing pains can overtax developing minds; it’s no wonder children often turn to fantasy to absorb the cost. Sadly some, like the young protagonists in Issa Lopez’s modern-day fairy tale Tigers Are Not Afraid, are forced to pay additional baggage fees.

Set in the slums of a Mexican town against a backdrop of warring drug cartels, the story centers on 10-year old Estrella (Paola Lara). Set adrift since her mother’s recent disappearance, Estrella lives in a state of dread. Her mother was likely abducted and murdered at the behest of a ruthless local politician (Tenoch Huerta) whose approach to gerrymandering is simple: liquidate all non-supporters. His dirty work is handled by thugs that the locals call huascas, supervised by a brutal drug cartel member named Caco.

Even within the sanctity of the classroom, Estrella can find no respite from the horror of her everyday reality; her day at school ends abruptly when a gun battle breaks out nearby, which sends the students diving under their desks to avoid becoming collateral damage.

Soon, the absence of her mother and a dwindling food supply sends Estrella out in the streets, where she encounters a group of orphaned lost boys, led by pistol-wielding “El Shine” (Juan Ramón López). Shine is reluctant to accept her in his gang; he demands she must prove her worth by assassinating the dreaded Caco. The look on Estrella’s face telegraphs that she is less than enthused about carrying out the request; but desperate times call for desperate measures. Besides, Shine has convinced her Caco is responsible for her mother’s disappearance (he claims to have irrefutable proof; but won’t show her).

It is at this juncture that it is suggested Estrella may possess Special Powers. As she stealthily (and shakily) creeps into Caco’s darkened apartment, where he appears to have nodded off in his living room chair while watching TV, she closes her eyes and makes a wish: “I wish I didn’t have to kill him.” Long story short-it seems somebody already has.

Is it coincidence…or did she “will” Caco to die? Opting to hedge her bets, Estrella rushes back to the gang hangout to give Shine his gun back and tell him she took care of that thing they had talked about. The boys are all duly impressed and accept her into the fold.

Oh…did I mention that she also sees dead people?

Lopez’s film conveys a sense of realism, infused with elements of fantasy and horror. Many have drawn parallels between her film and Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth; while I see a connection, I’d say the more obvious antecedent is Victor Erice’s lyrical and haunting 1973 drama The Spirit of the Beehive (which surely inspired Pan’s Labyrinth).

In fact, I was so taken by the parallels that after previewing Tigers Are Not Afraid, I immediately reached for my DVD copy of The Spirit of the Beehive to confirm whether my memory was playing tricks on me (in this type of arcane exercise, it rarely does; however, half the time I wish I could remember where I left my fucking wallet and keys).

Spirit of the Beehive takes place in 1940 Spain, in an isolated village on the vast Castilian plain. While “The Rain in Spain” may now be playing in your head (please accept my sincere apologies if it is), this is more about the reign of Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

This was the point in time when Franco had fully seized power in the country after winning the Spanish Civil War (which had cost the nation nearly half a million lives). Needless to say, everyday life under a totalitarian regime is not healthy for children and other living things. While she is too young to understand politics, 7-year-old Ana (Ana Torrent, in a remarkably affecting performance) can nonetheless sense the quiet desperation that appears to be slowly consuming her loving but oddly detached parents (Fernando Fernán Gómez and Teresa Gimpera).

While their upper middle-class life affords them a large villa and a live-in maid, Ana and her 9-year old sister Teresa (Teresa Gimpera) are essentially latchkey kids (they’re not living hand-to-mouth like the street orphans in Tigers Are Not Afraid, but are as insular and “lost” in their own way).

When a print of James Whale’s original 1931 version of Frankenstein arrives for an engagement at the village’s tiny movie theater, Ana’s life changes. As filmmaker Monte Hellman observes in his appreciation of the film written for the Criterion DVD edition:

Ana is disturbed by the killing of the little girl in the film and doesn’t understand why the monster is also killed. Isabel pretends to have the answers to Ana’s questions, but when pressed later, can say only that they’re not really dead. It’s only a movie, and nothing is real. Besides, she’s seen the monster. He’s a spirit, and she can make him appear whenever she calls him.

In subsequent scenes, the children play with and at death. Isabel experimentally attempts to strangle her cat, stopping when the cat scratches her. She applies the blood on her finger to her lips, as if it were lipstick. Later, she pretends to be dead to frighten Ana. Finally, Ana experiences the death of a real person, a deserter from the army whom she befriended. We feel Ana’s crisis as our own, for we have all passed from innocence to knowledge of mortality at some time in our own childhood.

And so it comes back to the theme as to how children under extreme duress come to grips with trauma; in the case of Estrella in Tigers Are Not Afraid and Ana in The Spirit of the Beehive (or for that matter, young Max in Where the Wild Things Are) it first requires literal invocation of their inner demons before they can be “destroyed”. Or perhaps you can trace it back to J.M. Barrie: “All you need is faith, trust and a little bit of pixie dust.”

Previous posts with related themes:

Where the Wild Things Are
Pan’s Labyrinth
A child’s guide to war: A film troika

More reviews at Den of Cinema
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—Dennis Hartley

Will Trump let this stand?

by digby