Author: tristero

Wow, Pence is dumb. I mean, seriously dumb.

You’d have to be dumb as a post to accept a job as Trump’s Coronavirus Czar if you cared at all about your political future — and Pence does.

When this goes south — and tragically, it will — Trump will have the perfect excuse to pick a new running mate. Someone like this.

UPDATE: Oh, yeah, there’s another thing about Pence. He’s completely incompetent, especially when it comes to health crises:

In late 2014, health officials belatedly became aware of an HIV outbreak in Scott County, Indiana,” The Nation reported in 2018. “With fewer than 24,000 people, this rural county rarely saw a single new case in a year, according to The New York Times. But by the time government agencies tried to stop the transmission of the virus a few months later, some 215 people had tested positive.”

“One man seemed responsible for needlessly letting the situation get out of control: Indiana’s then-Governor Mike Pence. In 2015, when the virus was seeming to rapidly move through networks of people who use intravenous drugs, even the reluctant local sheriff encouraged the governor to authorize a clean-needle exchange, a proven tool to reduce such an outbreak.”

That New York Times article was titled: “Mike Pence’s Response to H.I.V. Outbreak: Prayer, Then a Change of Heart.” It mentioned prayer five times.

Jeebus.

Just great:

As new countries confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths from the virus Wednesday, President Trump on Twitter called for a 6 p.m. news conference with officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others to discuss the spread of the virus.

I’m not prone to hypochondria but when the person is Trump and when, instead of appointing even minimally competent officials to handle the Covid-19 response, he calls a news conference where he will almost certainly force CDC officials to minimize the risk to Americans, I start to really fucking worry.

Adding: Covid-19 is serious and demands a rational, effective response. Unfortunately we have a deeply unserious clown for a president who is profoundly irrational and effective only at sowing chaos and misery.

To learn what a real plan for handling potential pandemics might look like, Elizabeth Warren and her staff have thought deeply about what needs to happen. Read about Warren’s plan here. It’s terrific.

Confession: I’ve been very reluctant to admit how much I’ve loathed this show. Not anymore. Finally, someone admits to disliking WSS about as much as I do. Never liked the thing, not the demeaning portrayal of the “exotics” and not the story.

But even something this awful has some redeeming qualities. Music students use the opening of “Maria” to memorize the interval of a tritone and “America” demonstrates hemiola rhythm quite nicely. There are some other interesting moments for music nerds.

I recently had a chance to see it again for free. Great cast, of course, but I could only take one act.

I don’t know this for a fact but I’m reasonably certain that Matthews, back in ’16 when Donald “very fine people on both sides” Trump was sewing up the nomination, never dared compare his rise to that of the Nazis. But that is exactly what he did tonight when it became clear Sanders would win:

The most jaw-dropping [comment] came from MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who said he was reading about the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940, and it reminded him of what was going on with Sanders appearing more likely to win the nomination.

“I’m reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940, and the Gen. [Louis] Renault calls up [British Prime Minister Winston] Churchill and says, ‘It’s over.’ And Churchill says, ‘How can it be? You got the greatest army in Europe. How could it be over?’ He said, ‘It’s over.’ So I had that suppressed feeling,” Matthews said.

And let’s be perfectly clear about this:

Sanders’ spokesman Mike Casca tweeted after the segment that he “never thought part of my job would be pleading with a national news network to stop likening the campaign of a jewish presidential candidate whose family was wiped out by the nazis to the third reich. but here we are.”

This is simply unacceptable.

If Barr’s job is really impossible to do with all the terrible criticism he’s getting from everyone including Trump, there’s a simple solution:

Quit.

This is all such bullshit. Don’t believe a word of it:

“I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody,” Mr. Barr said in an interview with ABC News. “And I said, whether it’s Congress, newspaper editorial board, or the president, I’m going to do what I think is right. I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.”

Mr. Barr’s remarks were aimed at containing the fallout from the department’s botched handling of its sentencing recommendation for Mr. Trump’s longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr., who was convicted of seven felonies in a bid to obstruct a congressional investigation that threatened the president.

Mr. Trump’s criticisms “make it impossible for me to do my job and to assure the courts and the prosecutors in the department that we’re doing our work with integrity,” Mr. Barr said.

He added, “It’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.”

People close to the president said they were caught off guard by the interview.

Bullshit. Here’s how you can tell:

Barr will keep his job. Guaranteed.

The more lenient recommendation that Barr imposed will not be rescinded. Or Trump will simply pardon Stone.

Finally, the media will fall over Barr praising him for his courage in standing up to the president. But everyone in DC knows what Barr really said:

“Next time, your Biglyness, please give me a call and I’ll just take care of it, ok?”

It took immense courage for those four prosecutors to quit over Trump’s interference in the Stone sentencing. But it’s just a start.

To truly get attention, dozens will need to resign en masse from Justice. And another several dozen from State. And another several dozen from…

And the reasons for the resignations needs to be unambiguous. As in, “I am resigning to protest the autocratic interference in the administration of justice by Donald Trump and his political appointees.”

Finally, there needs to be a safety net for these courageous people, i.e., jobs for them to fall back on while they are out of government. That will take cash, a far better use of Steyer and Bloomberg’s billions than their stupid vanity races.

Alissa Rubin, a highly knowledgeable and experienced foreign correspondent for the NY Times, has compiled a compelling narrative of the events that nearly led the US and Iran into open war.

It wasn’t Iran-backed Iraqi forces that attacked the US embassy in Iraq with rockets, according to her sources. It was ISIS :

The white Kia pickup turned off the desert road and rumbled onto a dirt track, stopping near a marsh. Soon there was a flash and a ripping sound as the first of the rockets fired from the truck soared toward Iraq’s K-1 military base.

The rockets wounded six people and killed an American contractor, setting off a chain of events that brought the United States and Iran to the brink of war.

The United States blamed an Iraqi militia with close ties to Iran and bombed five of the group’s bases. Angry Iraqis then stormed the American Embassy. The United States then killed Iran’s top general. Iran then fired missiles at American forces and mistakenly shot down a passenger jet, killing 176 people.

But Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets that started the spiral of events, saying they believe it is unlikely that the militia the United States blamed for the attack, Khataib Hezbollah, carried it out.

Iraqi officials acknowledge that they have no direct evidence tying the Dec. 27 rocket attack to one group or another. And elements of Iraq’s security forces have close ties to Iran, which might make them reluctant to blame an Iranian-linked force.

American officials insist that they have solid evidence that Khataib Hezbollah carried out the attack, though they have not made it public.

Iraqi officials say their doubts are based on circumstantial evidence and long experience in the area where the attack took place.

The rockets were launched from a Sunni Muslim part of Kirkuk Province notorious for attacks by the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group, which would have made the area hostile territory for a Shiite militia like Khataib Hezbollah.

Khataib Hezbollah has not had a presence in Kirkuk Province since 2014.

The Islamic State, however, had carried out three attacks relatively close to the base in the 10 days before the attack on K-1. Iraqi intelligence officials sent reports to the Americans in November and December warning that ISIS intended to target K-1, an Iraqi air base in Kirkuk Province that is also used by American forces.

And the abandoned Kia pickup was found was less than 1,000 feet from the site of an ISIS execution in September of five Shiite buffalo herders.

Why does this smell like the truth? Because an ISIS-based attack in Iraq wouldn’t serve Trump’s narrative that ISIS was defeated. Because an Iran-based attack provided a too-perfect excuse to counter-attack Iran.

There is no way to know for sure. What is certainly the case is that Donald Trump’s government lies about everything. There is no reason, without evidence (which Trump will not provide), to accept that Iran was behind these rocket attacks.

And, if you read the article, which you really should, there is every reason to suspect that this was an attack by ISIS. But that wasn’t useful to Trump. Instead, he blamed Iran as part of a Wag the Dog strategy to distract from his impeachment. And we nearly went to war.

Actually, Romney votes Trump nearly 79% of the time. In other words, Romney’s just one more far right Republican hack.

Adding: everyone is quoting Profiles in Courage right now when it comes to Romney’s vote. But I think Doug Jones, who also voted to convict, has it exactly right:

There will be so many who will simply look at what I’m doing today and say it is a profile in courage,” the senator said. “It is not. It is simply a matter of right and wrong. Where doing right is not a courageous act. It is simply following your oath.”

Translated: it’s not that Romney is some kind of paragon. He’s not. It’s that every single other Republican has demonstrated that they are cowards, dishonest, and likely both.

An American tragedy.