Author: tristero

The M****** Report 

by tristero

Golly, we’re gonna get an M today! Whoop de doo.

Even if it’s interesting, even if it’s damning (likely to be neither, see below), all it does is highlight how essential it is to see the U and the E and the L and the other L and another E and R.

Rachel had a great segment on Tuesday about how Barr’s pulled this stunt before, during Bush 1. He even used the same language — summarizing “principal conclusions”— and he got away with it for two years before the document he summarized was finally pried loose.

Of course, his summary then was a blatant pack of lies and misrepresentations.

This situation is a little different. He felt, for some reason, compelled to release a censored report. But you can rest assured the basic modus operandi is in effect: lie, obfuscate, cover up, stonewall, and delay, all in the service of a dictatorial level of executive power for American presidents.

All presidents, you ask? Yes, all legitimate American presidents. And, of course, the only legitimate ones are Republican, by definition.

Forgive my cynicism and pessimism, please. But it looks like the press is about to enthusiastically help this despicable scoundrel discredit and then bury one of the most important investigations into the most compromised, most corrupt, and most dangerously powerful man in the country.

We should refuse, even for a second, to accept the whitewash. We must see the entire uncensored Mueller report. Now.

Bach at the Border 

by tristero

A long time ago, I had the great privilege of producing Yo-Yo Ma’s first recording of the Bach Cello Suites. Musically, technically, and most of all personally, it was an unforgettably profound experience, a high point in my life. Yo-Yo was clearly a brilliant musician and a warm, humorous, and utterly charming person. Every once in a while I still run into him and marvel at his extraordinary ability to be both humble and confident, serious and informal at the same time. And of course, his performances are the stuff of legend.

Many major artists, believe their work transcends any political moment. But there are limits, and now, Yo-Yo Ma has made it quite clear where he stands:

World-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma brought his Bach Project to the sister cities of Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, on Saturday. The “Day of Action” featured performances in both cities to celebrate the relationship between the two communities. 

Ma played the opening notes of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Suite No. 1 for Unaccompanied Cello in a park next to the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge, one of the crossings that connect the U.S. and Mexican cities. 

The Laredo performance took place on an elevated stage before an audience of officials and onlookers. Concerns over possible rain disappeared as Ma began to play in the morning sunshine.

It was part of his Bach Project, which uses the composer’s 300-year-old music to explore connections between cultures. The project has taken Ma all over the world. On Friday it brought him to Laurie Auditorium at Trinity University in San Antonio, and on Saturday it brought him to Laredo, within a few feet of the Rio Grande. 

“As you all know, as you did and do and will do, in culture, we build bridges, not walls,” he said. After his performance, he gestured to the bridge to his right. “I’ve lived my life at the borders. Between cultures. Between disciplines. Between musics. Between generations.” 

Mateo Bailey, 16, lives in San Antonio. He grew up in El Paso, plays the cello and is the son of Grammy Award-winning cellist Zuill Bailey.
He felt Ma’s performance had special significance “because this event is on the border. And I’m half-Mexican as well as half-American … and for him to connect cello with what’s happening in the world is like, it’s a cultural bridge that was just built, and it’s amazing.” 

Yes, it is.

Be sure to watch the video and listen to Yo-Yo’s beautiful playing and his remarks: “A country is not a hotel. And it’s not full.“

Thanks, my friend.

The Children’s Version

by tristero

The last thing I need is some clown telling me what I can and can’t read. Ever. Barr’s obviously going to cut out the really good parts, and because those are the only parts I’m interested in, I’m not gonna read the censored Mueller report.

Not “redacted,” which, in this case (especially in this case), just means censored by an authoritarian government for its own purposes.

Anyone who does read the censored report should be warned that there is no way in hell they are reading what Mueller actually wrote. No matter how damning it appears, you are only reading what Trump and Barr think is fit for you to read. And to say the least, they can’t be trusted.

Likewise, analyses based on the censored Mueller report signify less than nothing about the actual report.

Let’s wait until we can read Mueller unexpurgated. We’re grown ups and we don’t need reality cleaned up for us.

One Half of All Republicans Believe Trump Was Chosen by God 

by tristero

If so, s/he sure as hell works in mysterious ways:

Almost half of registered Republican voters agree with White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that God “wanted Donald Trump to become president,” a new Fox News poll shows. 

Forty-five percent of Republicans agree with the sentiment—the Fox poll didn’t mention Sanders by name, referring to a recent comment by a “White House spokesperson.” That number represents a plurality, as 37 percent of Republicans disagree.   

Overall, one-quarter of registered voters share that view…

But fortunately:

…62 percent said they do not believe God wanted Trump to be commander-in-chief.

For the past 40 years or more, liberals and progressives have tended to dismiss public God-Talk as, at best, inappropriate for a secular democracy or, at worst, as puerile and even dangerous.

Fair enough. Basically, I agree. But there’s a problem.  When liberals don’t talk about religion, it cedes the public discourse to the most cynical of political operatives, the kind — like Mike Pence or George Bush — who are perfectly happy to invoke God to control what we do with our bodies, place our children in cages, deny our marriages, and basically burn anyone who’s not a Bible-beating Republican at the virtual stake.

That’s now changing. If intolerant Republicans are prepared to wrap their bigotry around a cross,  a new crop of liberals and progressives won’t let them get away with it.  Thank God:

Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., is a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan, a Rhodes scholar, married to a junior high school teacher. He’s gay and, more surprising for a modern Democrat, he is an out Christian, as quick to quote St. Augustine as Abraham Lincoln. On Sunday, he is expected to formally announce his run for president. 

Like Abrams and Senator Cory Booker, Mayor Pete says his faith made him a progressive. Scripture directs him to defend the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the societal castoffs.

Ditto AOC, who simply loves setting traps for the rightwing to fall into. She makes it look easy:

Afer Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sent a holiday greeting to “everyone … including refugee babies in mangers,” some critics launched into an ongoing, highly politicized debate about whether Jesus was a refugee.  

“Merry Christmas everyone – here’s to a holiday filled with happiness, family, and love for all people. (Including refugee babies in mangers + their parents),” the progressive Democrat from New York tweeted Tuesday.  

When critics protested that Jesus wasn’t a refugee, she followed up with a link to a Jesuit magazine article arguing he was. The link was meant “for all the anti-immigrant pundits uncomfortable with and denying that Christ’s family were refugees, too,” she wrote.

Why is Trump Emptying DHS of Everyone But Loyalists? 

by tristero

If I were paranoid, I’d think Trump was trying to create his own personal secret police force with unlimited power.

Y’think?

The Border is the American Reichstag 

by tristero

Just so it’s clear, Trump’s reason for purging DHS and going beyond incarcerating babies in cages is to provoke such outrage that there will be widespread riots at the border. This will enable Trump to point to what he (and the media) will declare an unequivocally real emergency. This will will allow him to crack down violently and close the border, accomplishing two immediately desirable (to him) goals: (1)provide red meat to his base; and (2) keep America as white as possible for as long as possible. More generally, it will enable him to consolidate his authoritarian power.

This kind of strategy — in which an incident is manufactured in order to justify a violent state crackdown — is a well-known authoritarian tactic known as the Reichstag Fire strategy. It comes from, you guessed it:

The Reichstag Fire was a dramatic arson attack occurring on February 27, 1933, which razed the building that housed the Reichstag (German parliament) in Berlin. Claiming the fire was part of a Communist attempt to overthrow the government, the newly named Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler used the fire as an excuse to seize absolute power in Germany, paving the way for the rise of his Nazi regime.

 Yep, Trump’s learning from the worst.

The Deadliest Addiction

by tristero

The Sacklers are a family of junkies. The Sacklers are suffering from an addiction to money. And tragically, it has led them to do terrible, terrible things. As this article makes clear, in their corner of the world, money addiction is so widespread it’s literally a pandemic:

The legal complaint, released at a news conference by the state attorney general Letitia James, was heavily redacted. Even so, it contains striking details alleging systematic fraud not only by the Sacklers but by a group of large but lesser-known companies that distributed alarming amounts of prescription painkillers amid a rising epidemic of abuse that has killed hundreds of thousands of people nationwide. 

The major pharmaceutical distributors — Cardinal Health, McKesson and Amerisource Bergen — warned pharmacies when their monthly opioid limits were approaching, then helped them manipulate the timing and volume of orders to circumvent the limits, the complaint charged. On the rare occasion when a distributor would conduct “surprise” audits of its customers, it would often alert them in advance, the complaint says.

Over the past two decades, more than 200,000 people have died in the United States from overdoses involving prescription opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 200,000 more have died from overdoses involving illegal opioids, like heroin.

Money addiction, unlike other addictions, doesn’t kill the addict. It kills others:

In New York State, where prescriptions for opioids increased ninefold between 2000 and 2011, opioid-related deaths have more than doubled since 2013, the lawsuit said. Nine New Yorkers die each day. 

Fortunately, the Sacklers’ enablers have started to wake to the serious problem the family has with money and are refusing to enable their addiction:

The Sacklers are one of the richest families in the United States, known for their generous philanthropy in the arts. But they have come under increasing scrutiny after new documents came to light in a Massachusetts case suggesting that some family members helped direct misleading marketing efforts for OxyContin and ignored evidence that the drug was being abused. Over the past several weeks, a number of cultural institutions in the United States and abroad have said they will no longer accept the family’s money.

 

DeVos and Trump Know Their Constituents Well 

by tristero

Betsy DeVos wants to kill funding for the Special Olympics. It likely won’t happen, but that’s not the point. The point is that neglecting the disabled is a positive virtue — for a certain sort of person.

It’s the reason why Trump openly mocked a disabled reporter. He knew exactly who (and what) he was appealing to. He was appealing to this kind of mentality:

Soon after Hitler took power, the Nazis formulated policy based on their vision of a biologically “pure” population, to create an “Aryan master race.” The “Law for the prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases,” proclaimed July 14, 1933, forced the sterilization of all persons who suffered from diseases considered hereditary, such as mental illness (schizophrenia and manic depression), retardation (“congenital feeble-mindedness”), physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism.

In short, defunding the Special Olympics and mocking the disabled is part and parcel of a deliberate program to win the hearts and minds (such as they are) of American white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis. It’s what they expect Trump to do. And he is nothing if not obliging.

“Deplorable?” No. Despicable.

Two Comments RE: Barr’s Letter: 

by tristero

Oh, Trump and Co. conspired all right. Mueller just couldn’t prove it beyond the technical legal definition of “reasonable doubt.” That is why the entire report must be released.

Trump thinks he got away with it. That will increase the chance he’s gonna get caught in the future because he’s likely to get even more arrogant and sloppy.

“It Wasn’t Just Khashoggi” 

by tristero

Of course it wasn’t. The details are sickening.