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Rigged!

Published by digby on October 14, 2023

He may be the front runner but that hasn’t stopped him from making back room deals to secure it

The NY Times lays out Trump’s strategy to ensure that he can’t lose the nomination. Does anyone think he won’t do the same with the general election if he can?

Not long after the new chairman of the Republican Party in Hawaii was elected in May, he received a voicemail from none other than Donald J. Trump.

“It’s your all-time favorite president,” Mr. Trump told the chairman, Tim Dalhouse. “I just called to congratulate you.”

The head of the Kansas G.O.P. received a similar message after he became chairman. The Nebraska chairman had a couple of minutes and a photo arranged with the former president during an Iowa stop. And the chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, Michael McDonald, who had served as a fake elector for Mr. Trump after the 2020 election, was among a group of state party officials who were treated to an hourslong Mar-a-Lago meal in March that ended in ice cream sundaes.

Months later, Mr. McDonald’s party in Nevada dramatically transformed the state’s influential early contest. The party enacted new rules that distinctively disadvantage Mr. Trump’s chief rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by effectively blocking the super PAC he relies upon from participating in the state’s new caucus.

Mr. McDonald has tilted the rules so significantly that some of Mr. Trump’s opponents have accused the party of manipulating the election for him — and have mostly pulled up stakes in the state entirely.

As Mr. Trump dodges debates and is regularly seen on his golf courses in branded white polo shirts and red MAGA hats, it can seem that he is bypassing the 2024 primary fight entirely. He has done relatively few public campaign events until recent weeks. But Mr. Trump and his political team have spent months working behind the scenes to build alliances and contingency plans with key party officials, seeking to twist the primary and delegate rules in their favor.

It amounts to a fail-safe in case Mr. DeSantis — or anyone else — scores a surprise victory in an early state. And it comes as Mr. Trump faces an extraordinary set of legal challenges, including four criminal indictments, that inject an unusual degree of uncertainty into a race Mr. Trump leads widely in national polling.

“They’ve rigged it anywhere they thought they could pull it off,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official who founded Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC that was essentially ousted from the Nevada caucus.

The maneuvering is the type of old-school party politics that Mr. Trump, who cut his teeth in the machine politics of 1970s and 1980s New York, relishes and knows best: personal calls and chits, glad-handing, relationships and reprisals. Advisers say that in contrast to some tasks, getting him to make those calls is a breeze. Plus, the seemingly arcane issue of delegate accumulation — tallying up formal support in the states to secure the nomination at the party convention next summer — is deeply personal to Mr. Trump after he was outflanked in exactly this fight in 2016.

Then, a better-organized Senator Ted Cruz of Texas worked Trump-skeptical state parties to win more delegates even in some places where he had lost at the ballot box. Mr. Cuccinelli was one of Mr. Cruz’s top delegate hunters at the time. Now, surrounded by a more experienced team and the authority of a former president with loyalists entrenched nationwide, Mr. Trump is doing to Mr. DeSantis exactly what he once accused Hillary Clinton of doing to Bernie Sanders: bending the system in his favor.

Mr. Trump’s backroom campaign reveals the extent to which he has become the establishment of the Republican Party.

“This is the kind of stuff that’s not talked about in the news,” said Scott Golden, the chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, who was invited to speak briefly in private with Mr. Trump when the former president visited his state this spring. “This is important stuff. It is ultimately about making sure your person is the nominee.”

In presidential primaries or caucuses, voters’ casting of ballots is only the first step. Those elections determine the individuals — called delegates — who go to the national party convention to formally choose their party’s nominee. The rules each state uses to allocate delegates and bind them to particular candidates can shift from year to year, and the people in charge of those rules are otherwise obscure state party officials.

Wooing those insiders can be crucial. Among those who attended the Mar-a-Lago dinner in March was Alida Benson, then the executive director of the Nevada Republican Party. Now she is Mr. Trump’s Nevada state director.

At one point, Mr. Trump’s campaign warned state parties nationwide about the legal risks of working with super PACs. In the past, super PACs have generally been allowed to organize and advertise in both primaries and caucuses. But in Nevada, a new rule was enacted that barred super PACs from sending speakers, or even literature, to caucus sites, or getting data from the state party.

The unstated goal: to box out Never Back Down.

Alex Latcham, who oversees Mr. Trump’s early-state operations, called the Nevada party’s moves especially sweet. He noted that Nevada is the state where the super PAC’s largest donor, Robert Bigelow, lives and where its chairman, Adam Laxalt, just ran for Senate.

“Not only is it a strategic victory, but it’s also a moral defeat for Always Back Down,” Mr. Latcham said, purposefully inverting the group’s name.

Advisers to Mr. DeSantis, known for his bare-knuckle tactics in Florida, have complained about an imbalance in the playing field.

“I don’t think they play fair,” said James Uthmeier, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager.

Mr. Cuccinelli accused Mr. Trump of hypocrisy. “No one has tried to rig the rules like Donald Trump has been doing here at least in a very long time,” he said. “And no one has ever done it who, in other circumstances, complains about the rules being rigged.”

Ya thinki,Cooch? Really? How unlike him.

Not so fast

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 14, 2023

2024 is a decade away in political years

Dave Wasserman commented last night on the present chaos in D.C.: “What’s so wild about the current political environment is that if the 2024 election were held this November, I believe a) Biden’s numbers are so bad he’d lose to an indicted Trump and b) House Rs are so dysfunctional/out of sorts they would lose the majority.”

November 2024 is a decade away in political years. Donald Trump could be appealing convictions by then, be banned from the ballot in a state or two, or be drooling onto his fast food while raging about beating Barack Obama at the polls in November as a regional war burns in the Middle East.

Still, Wasserman’s warnings about Biden’s weakness point to some Democratic weaknesses I monitor.

If these infrequent voters will base their votes on “whether the economy was better under Trump or Biden,” that’s not how Republicans will campaign, especially with Trump atop the ticket. He’ll lead with “Sleepy Joe” and culture war/immigration, especially with the Hamas attacks fresh in people’s minds.

Where I agree is that with infrequent and unaffiliated voters, Democrats are policy liberals and campaign conservatives. When every damned election is “the most important election of our lifetime,” they take no chances, try nothing new. Throw the bomb? Hell, no. Too risky. Fall on the ball and hope to run out the clock instead. That is, do what they’ve always done, just more of it.

There are tens of thousands of Democratic votes in North Carolina alone among unaffiliated voters who sit at home in blue precincts where their unaffiliated neighbors overwhelmingly vote Democrat. But campaigns ignore them because these registrants have three strikes against them.

Strike 1: They are not registered Democrats.
Strike 2: They have poor voting records (low-propensity voters).
Strike 3: They reside in voting precincts so blue and that campaigns waste no time there.

Unaffiliated turnout is ~12% less than Democratic turnout in these precincts. In the rest of my state it is only 5-6% less.

Q1: Are R-leaning UNAs more motivated to vote in redder counties? If so, why?
Q2: Are D-leaning UNAs less motivated to vote in bluer counties? If so, why?

What are Democrats prepared to do about it … 2024 being “the most important election of our lifetime” and all?

An impossible situation

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 14, 2023

Pretty much says it:

As Israel launches its eye-for-an-eye effort to obliterate Hamas for murdering 1,000+ civilians on its soil in a rave of bloodshed — young and old, Israelis and tourists — multiple commentators remind us that killing the idea of Hamas is quite a different thing from killing its leaders. Flattening northern Gaza and killing more even civilians in the process will not accomplish that.

And yet no state cannot endure such a threat on its doorstep. Palestinians cannot endure life under tighter and tighter restrictions. Something was going to give. This is it. And yet.

Those of us watching, powerless to stop the killing, would do well to heed Nicholas Kristof’s admonition:

If we owe a moral responsibility to Israeli children, then we owe the same moral responsibility to Palestinian children. Their lives have equal weight. If you care about human life only in Israel or only in Gaza, then you don’t actually care about human life.

CNN reports:

Some Palestinian-Americans have received their first set of instructions that family members stuck in Gaza may be able to evacuate into Egypt on Saturday afternoon, according to emails shared with CNN.

The US State Department’s Consular Affairs Crisis Management System (CACMS) told family members that on Saturday the Rafah crossing “may be open.”

“We understand the security situation is difficult, but if you wish to depart Gaza you may want to take advantage of this opportunity,” the CACMS email said.

A State Department spokesperson told CNN they “are actively discussing this with our Israeli and Egyptian counterparts.”

“We support safe passage for civilians,” they said. “We are working with our Israeli and Egyptian partners to establish a safe humanitarian corridor both for Gazans trying to flee this war and to ensure humanitarian assistance reaches those in need within the territory.”

What are the chances it will be only foreign nationals allowed to leave? See below.

Friday Night Soother

Published by digby on October 13, 2023

I think we all need one tonight. I know I do. (And a good stiff drink as well.)

There are a lot of good things about dogs, and their cuteness and loyalty are two of them. But we’re not the only ones who see all these positives; a sweet little sheep does, too.

On October 10, 2023, TikTok user Lunatic Asylum (@lunatic.asylum6) shared a video of a miniature sheep named Kevin, who loves dogs so much he thinks he is one. Take a look!

@lunatic.asylum6 kevin thinks he’s a dog #nz #miniaturesheep #lilguy ♬ Funny Song – Funny Song Studio & Sounds Reel

@lunatic.asylum6 Kevin the miniature sheep 🐮 #miniaturesheep #happydog ♬ Happy Dog – DJ Moody

Kevin is a miniature sheep and he’s the cutest thing. He is small and has fluffy black and white wool, and looks to be the happiest sheep we’ve seen in a long time. But there’s something else that makes this little one stand out–he thinks he’s a dog.

In a 30-second video, Kevin’s human shared a good look at his dog-like qualities, starting from the fact that this sheep always looks happy.

He runs up to the camera and pauses to give a smile. He’s got a happy gallop when he’s being taken for a walk with his leash and collar, and he even runs along the shoreline at the beach with his brother, a dog who looks just like him.

If all that wasn’t enough, Kevin also wags his tiny tail when he’s happy and loves to cuddle up on the bed and the couch.

“Kevin thinks he’s a dog,” the caption on the video reads. And unsurprisingly, the people in the comments could not get enough of Kevin and his puppy-like qualities.

“The little hops in the run,” one viewer noticed.

“The little hops,” someone else echoed.

“Not to be dramatic, but I would die for Kevin,” added another.

“The way I’d never be depressed again,” someone else admitted.

“Adds baby sheep to cart,” another person joked.

According to TreeHugger, there are several different breeds of sheep that can be considered miniature, Babydolls, for example. 

“Babydolls are only about 18 to 24 inches tall when they’re fully grown,” the site shares. “They can weigh between 60 and 125 pounds. Because of their small size, they’re easy to handle and popular as pets for children and for 4-H projects. Babydoll sheep can be easily contained with small, low fences.”

We hope Kevin keeps his dog-like personality!

Show the crazy

Published by digby on October 13, 2023

People need to see just how looney Trump is these days. It’s worse than ever.

He’s right. Not that he’s any prize himself. I agree with George Conway here:

Former Republican George Conway said Democrats need to wage a “psychological war” against Donald Trump until it makes him so “crazy” that he violates court orders.

“I think you have to wage psychological war on Donald Trump,” Conway, a lawyer and Never Trump activist, said during a panel discussion at The New Republic’s Stop Trump Summit on Wednesday. “I don’t think the Democrats have ever attacked Trump enough.”

In an interview afterward with TNR, Conway explained that Democrats could wage a coordinated psychological campaign against Trump through a series of advertisements. “You can just run ads on TV in the local area where he is,” said Conway, whom Trump had once considered nominating for solicitor general.

Conway said that the ads could target the things Trump feels the most insecure about. “He knows he’s not that smart, he knows he’s not that rich, he knows that he’s not that good. And so, if you go and attack him for the things he knows he is not deep down, it makes him crazy.”

“He’s not that far from his bursting point,” Conway added. And making Trump nuts could impact ongoing his legal troubles.

“The more he gets attacked the more he will talk about things he shouldn’t be talking about,” Conway said. “I think you could even get him thrown into jail, by running the right ad,” he added.

Trump was slapped with a gag order in his New York trial after he made comments attacking New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has accused him and his associates of fraudulently inflating the value of their real estate assets. In the Georgia case, the conditions of his release on bail bar him from intimidating witnesses and co-defendants.

“You run ads that make him angry at those people, like [Mark] Meadows,” said Conway, referring to the former top Trump aide and co-defendant in the Georgia trial. “You run these creepy ads that get into his head, he’ll just go out there and he’ll violate his conditions of release.”

Conway went on to say that beating Trump requires the media to show America who Trump is. “I disagree with some of the critiques that you hear, I think predominantly from the left, about ‘You don’t give him oxygen; you don’t give him air time.’ No. You give him more. Show everybody the crazy.”

He’s already trying to back off his intermperate comments about Hezbollah, Isreal and Netanyahu. Even if we all agree that Netanyau is a monster, nobody with any sense can agree that congratulating Biden on his win is a reason or refusing to join a risky assassination plot to kill a major Iranian General is the reason. But that’s Trump’s beef and it’s out there whether he likes it or not. People aren’t going to forget them — if they see them.

I say let it out. Make people watch it. Democrats and Independents have to be reminded what a screaming freak he is and the few Republicans who haven’t completely disappeared into the Trump cult have to realize that he’s gotten worse over his years out of the White House. It will be a close election and since Fox and the right wing media are happy to show Trump in all his glory because their audience loves the fact that he’s a crazy lunatic, the the mainstream media needs to make sure that the rest of the country sees him too. If he happens to run afoul of the law (again) well, that’s on him.

“It’s like the virus had escaped the lab”

Published by digby on October 13, 2023

It has now taken over the GOP host

Josh Marshall wrote this last night and I think it’s the only way to properly frame what’s happening in the US Congress right now. It’s bigger than the speakers race. It’s simply the way the Republican party operates now in every way:

Just moments ago news broke that Steve Scalise had withdrawn his bid to be Speaker of the House. This is a genuinely stunning development, even though I semi-predicted it earlier today. I said it half in jest. But we live in an age when half-jokes often come to pass rapidly.

I had a conversation this evening that allowed me to clarify some of my own thinking about these developments. After Scalise won the caucus Speakership vote you had a slow trickle of members saying “I’m still for Jim Jordan.” Then later you had news reports asking, “Can Steve Scalise get to 217?”

There’s a category, conceptual breakdown here that is kind of hiding in plain view. What do these members mean they’re still for Jim Jordan? He lost. It’s over. Scalise is the Republican Speaker candidate. End of story.

Hopefully it’s clear that I’m not making a case for Steve Scalise. I’m certainly not making a case for Jim Jordan. But there’s an elemental breakdown here that transcends the individuals involved. Participating in a majority organizational vote means, if sometimes only implicitly, abiding by its results. The caucus vote wasn’t a straw poll or an advisory opinion. It’s binding. It’s over. And yet it was treated as basically a given, in the GOP caucus and in the press coverage, that Scalise, having won the vote, then had to build from the 113 he got in the caucus vote to 217.

You’re probably saying: We know this Josh. They’re a mess. But we know this.

But I think that’s only a measure of how much this has been normalized when it’s actually completely abnormal. The literal definition of a caucus in American political usage is a defined group that collectively decides on actions by majority vote and then acts in unison in a parliamentary context.

From one perspective this is no more than a replay of what happened in January. A group of holdouts refused to vote for the caucus’s candidate. But there’s something a bit different. That was the rump of the ‘Freedom Caucus’, an at least somewhat ideologically coherent trouble-making group that, as I’ve explained in a few posts, has been playing this game going back more than a decade. But the holdouts for Scalise were more various — right, left, a heavy load of attention-seekers who didn’t bother to put forward any kind of reason that made any sense. It’s like the virus had escaped the lab. It wasn’t just Freedom Caucus weirdos anymore. It’s now treated as a given that caucus elections are purely advisory or essentially meaningless.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer caucus, of course. But we should note that there’s a clear thread connecting this to 2020 rigged electionism and, perhaps more tightly, the dramas of debt ceiling hostage-taking and government shutdowns. The premise of all those dramas is that they’re what you do when you don’t have the votes to do what you want. If you’ve got the votes in the Congress and a President who will sign your bills, you just do it. Threatening to shut down the government is what you do when you don’t. Do what I say even though I don’t have the votes or I start breaking things. That’s the bottom line behind every one of these gambits.

It’s all cut from the same cloth.

The best and perhaps only path for Scalise was to force the matter. What do you mean: Do I have the votes? The election already happened. I won. It’s over. If you weren’t going to honor the results you shouldn’t have shown up to vote. If people don’t want to honor the commitment they made then lets put everyone on the record. That is kind of what McCarthy did. Of course, he also negotiated. Clearly Scalise didn’t think that was possible. As I said, couldn’t happen to a nicer caucus. The pathogen they developed to break the republic ended up infecting them too. It’s of a piece with election denialism and parliamentary terrorism. All fruit of the same poison tree.

This has been growing for a very long time. Think about Gingrich and the endless ridiculous “investigations” into Bill Clinton, the 2000 election and beyond. Their motto has been to win by any means necessary and they have fewer and fewer limits.

Nancy Mace competes for the title of looniest House GOPer

Published by digby on October 13, 2023

And she might just win it

There’s a new “crazy Nancy” in town and she is very, very weird:

When former President Donald Trump lined up his top supporters at a hot and sticky rally in South Carolina’s Lowcountry two weeks ago, one of the state’s most visible GOP politicians was notably not in attendance.

Despite her ubiquity on TV and social media, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) wasn’t even an intro speaker.

In a sense, Mace’s absence wasn’t surprising. In 2021, her first year in office, she went from harshly criticizing Trump over Jan. 6 to groveling in a self-filmed video in front of Trump Tower after the former president endorsed her 2022 primary challenger, Katie Arrington.

A week after the South Carolina rally, Mace’s vote to end Kevin McCarthy’s speakership—and her confusing justification for it—may have obliterated whatever relationships she had left in the GOP.

Yet, Mace has been privately telling Republicans that she has a real shot at being named Trump’s vice presidential nominee for the 2024 election, according to six Republicans familiar with the discussions.

Three South Carolina Republicans also said they’ve heard about Mace floating herself as a VP pick, dating back to the early summer.

Given their history, the idea sounds absurd to people who know Trump and Mace. A source close to Trump said the former president “absolutely hates Nancy Mace,” while a former senior aide to the congresswoman put it more bluntly.

“I would see Trump pick [Mike] Pence before he picks Mace,” the former staffer said.

[…]

The two Republicans share something in common that could help explain some of the veep chatter: Chris LaCivita, the top Trump 2024 campaign adviser who happens to be Mace’s former political strategist.

After Mace’s 2020 victory over former Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC), LaCivita wrote a blog post for FP1 Strategies, where he used to be a consultant, titled: “Nancy Mace: The Most Daring & Successful Tactic of 2020.”

“Nancy Mace is in Congress today because she had the courage of her own convictions and used her knowledge of her district to guide her decision-making rather than heeding the warnings of D.C. campaign operatives,” LaCivita gushed in the post, a copy of which The Daily Beast reviewed.

Now, some Republicans credit LaCivita with helping Mace emerge as an unlikely defender of the former president in the depths of his legal quagmire. She’s also been a frequent advocate of Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, launched this summer.

“He put her name out there,” a source familiar with the Mace VP discussions told The Daily Beast.

Noting that Trump endorsed a challenger to Mace in 2022, the source continued that the former president “can’t stand her” and “has never really trusted her.”

Despite Mace disavowing Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection, and given her ties to fellow South Carolinians Nikki Haley and Tim Scott in the 2024 field—which she’s described as a “love triangle”—LaCivita has been seen as a Mace ally in Trumpworld when few others have been willing to go to bat for her.

LaCivita denied pushing Mace as a veep candidate. “I was a former consultant for Rep. Mace—but it ends there,” LaCivita said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Any suggestion or rumor that I have been advocating for anyone as VP is complete horseshit. The pick of a vice presidential candidate is President Trump’s, and President Trump’s alone.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung also responded to the reporting, saying, “None of these so-called sources know what they’re talking about. If they spent half the time spreading untrue stories as they do on their mental health, they’d be much happier people.”

[…]

While she has sometimes positioned herself as a moderate, in voting to oust McCarthy, Mace has aligned herself with Trumpworld figures like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Steve Bannon. Since her pivotal vote, Mace has tried to tap their grassroots supporters for donations by casting herself as an enemy of the establishment. Many Republican officials and operatives are indeed furious with Mace, but mostly because they believe she is only motivated by attention.

Their case was not weakened when she walked into a GOP conference on Tuesday wearing a shirt with a literal scarlet letter to make a statement on “being demonized for my vote and for my voice.”

She is a bizarre figure by normal political standards but she fits right in the MAGA universe.

Where do they find these people?

Some good reads

Published by digby on October 13, 2023

There is a ton of good writing out there on the war in Israel. It’s so fraught with emotion and complex morality that it’s hard to keep up. I admit that I’m starting to flag a bit. There have also been some good television discusions. This was one of them and I’m glad Josh Marshall caught it:

Here are a few links I’ve bookmarked. I don’t endorse all the ideas within them necessarily but they’re all thoughtful and interesting:

The NRRB: Heading toward a second Nakba
Dissent: Toward a humane left
The Nation: The Catastrophic Moral Failing of Those Who Won’t Condemn Hamas
Haaretz: Israel’s new concept of Hamas and Gaza is doomed to fail just like the last one
NYT Kristof: Seeking a Moral Compass in Gaza’s War
NYT Goldberg: The Massacre in Israel and the Need for a Decent Left
The Guardian: How should the US respond to the Israel-Palestine crisis? Our panel weighs in Noura Erakat, Alex Kane, Joshua Leifer, Libby Lenkinski, Yousef Munayyer and Diala Shamas
The NYT guest essay: I’m Going to War for Israel. Palestinians Are Not My Enemy
The Atlantic: Israel Is Walking Into a Trap

I found this NYT article today called “Israel, Gaza and the Laws of War: International law offers a framework for how to analyze what is happening” to be particularly helpful in trying to reason my way through a situation in which civilians are being targeted and/or caught in the crossfire by both sides:

It can be difficult to hold onto reason through the fog of grief that is the natural response to what has occurred in recent days in Israel and Gaza.

But international law offers a framework for how to analyze what is happening, even while atrocities and deaths from the Hamas incursion are still being documented, and the consequences of Israel’s siege and airstrikes on the crowded Gaza Strip, home to millions of civilians, continue to unfold. New information is coming out every day. Details will take time to verify, misinformation is already widespread, and it can be easy to get bogged down in debates over unconfirmed allegations. The laws of war offer a guide to what matters most, and to what should happen next.

Two principles are particularly helpful. The first is that the “why” and the “how” of war are separate legal questions. The justice or injustice of a cause of war does not change the obligation to fight it according to the rules of humanitarian law.

The second, related principle, from which much of humanitarian law derives, is that civilians are entitled to protection. Armies and other armed groups cannot target them directly. Nor can they disproportionately harm them in the course of pursuing legitimate military goals. And those obligations still apply even if the other side violates them by targeting civilians themselves.

‘Protections for human beings’

The origins of the law of war go back centuries. But its modern form was a reaction to the world wars of the 20th century. In 1928, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, an international treaty, outlawed most forms of war. It was followed by the U.N. Charter of 1945, which clarified the ban on aggressive war, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and 1977, and the further development of international criminal law in the second half of the 20th century, leading to the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2002.

The law governing when states can use military force is known as “jus ad bellum,” a Latin term that refers to the law regulating the use of force internationally.

Today, this law is very strict, essentially forbidding states to use force against each other except in self-defense, said Oona Hathaway, a professor at Yale Law School and co-author of “The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World.”

“It used to be the case that states could go to war for pretty much any reason,” Hathaway said. “They could go to war for debt collection. They could go to war, you know, to respond to wife stealing. They could go to war because other side is interfering with their trade relations. But that is no longer true.”

But regardless of whether there are legitimate grounds to use force, she said, all parties to the conflict are still expected to follow the humanitarian laws governing the conduct of the war itself, known as “jus in bello” — law regulating the conduct of hostilities.

Anyone who has spent much time on social media recently will have seen people conflate the justness of the conflict itself with the justness of the way it is being conducted. Some have appeared to excuse the killing of Israeli civilians on the basis that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is wrong, while others appeared to dismiss the killing of Palestinian civilians in airstrikes on the grounds that Israel is right to defend itself from attack.

Treating causes and conduct as two separate questions, as the law does, is a way to hold the complexity of war and the political questions that underlie it in clear focus, without losing sight of the shared humanity on all sides.

That same goal guided the development of the laws of war. “International law has traditionally separated the two in an effort to protect people in warfare, no matter the justification for the initial use of force,” said Monica Hakimi, a Columbia Law School professor. “They wanted to make sure that both sides were equally protected in war, so as to make war as humane as possible.”

The core principle of jus in bello is that civilians cannot be targeted for military purposes, or disproportionately harmed as a means to a military end. That’s true regardless of the legality of the underlying conflict, and regardless of whether the opposing side has itself violated humanitarian law.

“The most straightforward way to think about that is just that the protections are protections for human beings,” said Tom Dannenbaum, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University who is an expert on humanitarian law.

“Many of those human beings have nothing to do with violations by the state or nonstate armed groups with which they’re somehow connected,” he said. It would not make sense, he said, to reduce or eliminate civilians’ rights in reaction to the behavior of armed groups they do not control.

Civilians under fire

Hamas has killed more than 1,200 Israelis, of whom 222 were soldiers, according to the Israeli government. The civilians killed included young people attending a music festival, babies, children and the elderly.

“There is no question,” Dannenbaum said, that the Hamas assault “involved multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity, some of which are ongoing. Those are not close calls.”

The attackers also took approximately 150 people hostage. Volker Turk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement on Tuesday that the taking of hostages is prohibited by international law, and called on Palestinian armed groups to immediately and unconditionally release all captured civilians.

“Hamas is bound by, but has a practice of violating, the basic provisions of international humanitarian law,” Hakimi said. Acts such as systematic murder and hostage-taking are grave violations of the Geneva Conventions, as well as crimes under international criminal law.

Hamas could not be reached for comment, but Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas political official, said that the group “obeys all international and moral laws” in an interview with The Economist on Oct. 10, three days after the attack on Israel.

In the same statement that decried hostage-taking, Turk, the U.N. official, raised grave concerns about Israel’s actions in Gaza. On Monday, Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant had announced a complete siege of the territory, saying that “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” would be allowed into the 25 mile-long strip of land that is home to more than two million people, approximately half of whom are under 18.

“The imposition of sieges that endanger the lives of civilians by depriving them of goods essential for their survival is prohibited under international humanitarian law,” Turk said.

Dannenbaum, an expert on siege law, said that the defense minister’s statement appeared to be an unusually clear-cut example of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, which is considered a violation of international humanitarian law, a crime against humanity and a war crime. (Though, he noted, jurisdiction over some war crimes would depend on whether the conflict is considered inter-state.)

“When you have a blanket, unequivocal, total cutoff of food, water, electricity and fuel, it’s just straightforward,” he said. “Gallant’s statement, explicit, without caveat, and from the top, stands out.”

Ophir Falk, a foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, told The New York Times on Thursday: “Israel is acting in complete compliance with international law, and always has.”

Israel has been heavily bombarding Gaza in recent days, part of a campaign against Hamas that a military spokesman said would be “bigger and more severe” than previous actions in the territory.

Under international law, even attacks on legitimate military targets are illegal if they disproportionately harm civilians, Hakimi said.

According to a Thursday statement from Gaza’s health ministry, 1,354 people have been killed by airstrikes since Saturday and 6,049 had been wounded. The previous day, the ministry said that about 60 percent of those injured are women and children. Attacks have targeted hospitals and schools where Israel has claimed that Hamas members were hiding.

Falk, the adviser to Netanyahu, said that questions of the proportionality of harm to civilians were “tactical and operational” matters that he would not discuss, but that Israel was bombing military targets, and always warned civilians that attacks were imminent. However, on Tuesday, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman, said that the Israeli Air Force was too stretched to fire the warning strikes — known as “roof knocks” — that it has fired in previous Gaza conflicts to encourage Palestinian civilians to leave an area before it is hit with larger missiles. Gazans say that few warnings have been given.

And because Gaza is under siege and heavy bombardment, civilians have few avenues of escape, even if warned.

“You can have disagreements about whether something is or is not proportional, because you can have disagreements about the value of the military targets,” Hakimi said. However, there are limits to those arguments, she said, saying that it would not be permissible to justify mass civilian casualties by saying that their deaths would shorten the overall conflict, for example.

The question of what is proportional is a balancing test that has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, she said.


Meanwhile at the Trump trial

Published by digby on October 13, 2023

His employees are a bunch of Sgt. Schultzes

In case you’re interested in the recent doings of the Trump fraud trial this week, this article in the Daily Best runs down a part of it.

By the way, Trump hasannounced that he plans to attend the tril next week when Michael Cohen is expected to take the stand. I guess hw figures he can bad-vibe him with that mug-shot scowl:

For years, a high-ranking accountant at the Trump Organization was the point man for ensuring that tweaked numbers padded Donald Trump’s wealth on paper.

But when he appeared on the witness stand at the former president’s bank fraud trial last week, the accountant’s supposed finance expertise suddenly vanished into thin air.

Jeffrey McConney, who recently retired as the company’s controller, has spent recent years facing close legal scrutiny.

In 2017, state investigators questioned him over the way Trump misused his charity, which was eventually dissolved. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg used McConney’s testimony to convict the Trump Organization of tax fraud last year. And now, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ attorneys are trying to use McConney to prove that the Trump family committed bank fraud and should have their real estate empire revoked of its business licenses and potentially stripped of its assets.

Now, McConney is in a precarious position, because the attorney general’s law enforcement effort also targets him directly. Alongside his former boss, he is a defendant in James’ $250 million lawsuit, given that the accountant was the one who routinely tallied up the estimated values of dozens of Trump properties—many of which were deliberately pumped up.

McConney’s deep familiarity with the Trump Organization and its business strategies made it all the more astounding when, on Friday, Trump’s defense lawyers suddenly took the stance that McConney actually doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

The shocking moment happened when Andrew Amer, special litigation counsel for the attorney general, asked McConney about the way company documents seemed to fake the rent a high-end grocery chain paid at Trump’s building at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan.

“Can we agree, Mr. McConney, that by adding the income from the lease from Dean & DeLuca into your valuation that you double-counted the Dean & DeLuca income in your valuation?” Amer asked.

“Objection, Your Honor,” interjected defense lawyer Jesus Suarez. “Mr. McConney is not a valuation expert. He’s not offered as a valuation expert.”

New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur F. Engoron quickly overruled that objection, but the ridiculous dichotomy was not lost on those in the courtroom.

The idea that the Trump Organization’s long-time bean counter would be oblivious to the inner workings of real estate valuations seemed implausible, given that documents presented at trial showed that he was the key conduit to getting those very valuations compiled into Trump’s annual statements of financial condition.

That paperwork, which was signed off by outside accountants at the firm MazarsUSA, was the reason that financial institutions like Deutsche Bank and Ladder Capital extended hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Trump. Those funds allowed his company to seal several marquee deals, including the purchase of the Doral golf course in South Florida and the acquisition of the Old Post Office in downtown Washington, which briefly became a Trump hotel.

The inherently contradictory nature of Trump lawyers’ stance on McConney underscored the sharp contrast on display at the ongoing bank fraud trial, where James is trying to bolster a case the judge has already decided has merit while Trump lawyers combat the very premise of the investigation. When investigators point to spreadsheets, the defense either shrugs, appears confused, or claims vastly inflated values are mere differences of opinion.

For days, state investigators have been laying out how the Trump Organization fudged its numbers before turning the books over to its outside accountant Donald Bender at MazarsUSA. There, the firm would sign off on Trump’s personal financial statements and give them the aura of authenticity. It was McConney’s job to prepare the spreadsheets that listed properties, associated bank account totals, and estimated values.

With him on the stand, the AG’s office reviewed the way McConney gathered real estate development valuations as part of his regular job as the company controller. They repeatedly pointed out how he appeared to use omissions to trick Mazars and throw them off the scent of any impropriety.

Take, for example, Trump Park Avenue, a residential building located in an ultra high-end area east of Manhattan’s Central Park. When McConney put together the numbers for the 32-story condo building, his original spreadsheet listed all the units, along with their offering prices and market values.

But McConney admitted to intentionally deleting that last column before sending it over to Mazars—ensuring the outside firm could only see the pie-in-the-sky prices Trump requested, not the market values that reflected what someone would actually pay for those luxury condos.

That sleight of hand added roughly $57 million to Trump’s wealth on paper, math that McConney acknowledged in court.

Then there’s the forested estate in upstate New York called Seven Springs, a failed development project that doubles as Trump’s Bruce Wayne-esque mansion just north of Gotham. Once again, McConney played a central role in fudging the numbers by acting as if seven additional mansions had been greenlit for construction, adding a whopping $161 million to the total value.

And once again, McConney copped to those calculations on the witness stand.

“Were you operating under the assumption when doing this valuation in these two years that approvals had been obtained, all necessarily approvals had been obtained for these seven homes in Bedford?” Amer asked him

“Looking at this now, yes,” McConney responded.

Some of the dodgy math appeared to come from Eric Trump, one of the former president’s sons, who has long served on the Trump Organization’s leadership team.McConney testified that, after a telephone conversation with the Trump company executive in 2013, another section of Seven Springs jumped in value on paper from $25 million to $101 million—even though they couldn’t actually sell the property they claimed to have.

“And he also, by the way, told you that the project was put on hold, right?” Amer asked.

“Yes,” McConney said.

“But you’re still accounting for the profit from those 71 mid-rise units that were put on hold, as if it’s immediately realized as of June 30, 2013, correct?” Amer asked.

“Yes,” McConney responded.

At times, the ex-controller demurred, pointing out that, in fact, there was another department that was really in charge of coming up with asset values. But investigators kept displaying spreadsheets and emails that either bore McConney’s name or were created by him, highlighting his key role in making sure these numbers got in front of the right people to secure those bank loans.

On the stand, the accountant claimed to be oblivious to the basic facts about yet another dubious deal of Trump’s with regard to the Seven Springs property, even though it was his job as the company’s controller to oversee the Trump Organization’s books.

This one dealt with the way Trump eventually cut his losses at Seven Springs: by creating a conservation easement on the property, essentially giving up development rights by dedicating the land for natural preservation, in exchange for a tax break.

Though Trump stretched out the tax write-off beyond belief by inflating the land value there, McConney claimed he didn’t even understand what was going on.

“What’s being donated are the development rights, correct?” Amer asked.

“I’ll take your word for that,” McConney responded.

At the trial last week, McConney revealed that he recently retired from the Trump Organization and received just over half of his $500,000 severance package. The detail raised questions about his testimony that were reminiscent of the deal that his direct boss, Allen Weisselberg, got while he was testifying at the company’s criminal tax fraud trial last year.

Although the judge in the current civil trial has already determined that the Trumps, McConney, and Weisselberg engaged in bank fraud and that business licenses should be revoked, the Attorney General still has a long way to go before she can declare total victory. The trial is set to continue until the end of December

Trump Org. CFO Weisselberg testified yesterday that it’s a total coincidence that his $2 million severence package which is contingent on certain assurances of his loyalty matches, almost to the dollar, the $2 million he had to pay in tax-fraud fines and interest last year.  Oh, and he doesn’t know much about the company’s finances either.

By the way, Trump is planning to attend the trial again next week as his former fixer Michael Cohen testifies. I think we probably believes he can pull sme kind of a mobster move by staring at him with the mug shot scowl and somehow intimidate him into backing off his testimony.

Trump and Israel

Published by digby on October 13, 2023

No one could be more ignorant or self-serving

It seems like only yesterday that then-President Donald Trump appeared before the Republican Jewish Coalition and referred to Benjamin Netanyahu as “your prime minister” despite the fact that, by definition, everyone there was American, not Israeli. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Lamenting that American Jews tend to vote more often for Democrats, in the same speech he proclaimed that voting for them again “would cripple our country and very well could leave Israel out there all by yourselves” and then suggested that “maybe you could explain that to some of your people who say ‘Oh, we don’t like tariffs.’” This was happening at the same time as Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was under fire from the right for suggesting that some American Jews have “dual loyalties,” but somehow Trump didn’t hear any condemnation from his fellow Republicans.

Omar was excoriated for tweeting that the Israel lobby was “all about the benjamins,” but when Trump told a Jewish audience during the 2016 campaign that “you’re not going to support me, because I don’t want your money,” that didn’t cause the GOP to gasp in horror. As usual, if Trump says it it must be OK. (And let’s note that Omar apologized in both instances. Trump has never apologized for anything in his life.)

It has always griped Trump that Jewish Americans didn’t vote for him in large numbers, since he believes he has delivered more for them than any leader in the history of the world. He had tasked his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with solving all the problems in the Middle East which he apparently believed he’d done by moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and signing the Abraham Accords, a diplomatic normalization agreement between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. But in 2020, nearly seven in 10 Jewish voters went with Joe Biden.

That’s not a huge surprise; Jewish voters have generally supported Democrats ever since pollsters first started tracking their votes in 1916. That’s not to say there haven’t been plenty of visible and influential Jewish Republicans, but in terms of overall voting patterns, the Democrats have been the political home of the vast majority of American Jews.

But in recent years, Israel has become a top-tier issue for Republicans — not so much because they care deeply about the fortunes of the Israeli people or the future of the Middle East, although some undoubtedly do. They are interested in Israel largely because the single most loyal faction of Republican voters, conservative evangelical Christians, are obsessed with it. As the Washington Post’s Philip Bump reported, a poll by LifeWay Research “found that 80 percent of evangelicals believed that the creation of Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy that would bring about Christ’s return.” Pastor Nate Pyle explained how that is supposed to work in simple terms:

What kick-starts the end times into motion is Israel’s political boundaries being reestablished to what God promised the Israelites according to the Bible.

The evangelical base loves Trump more than any other president ever, but not because he shares their beliefs. He obviously doesn’t. And it isn’t just because he signed off on the Federalist Society-endorsed Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. They really love him for moving the embassy to Jerusalem, which they see as the first step toward Israel rebuilding the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, which is understood as a necessary precursor to the End Times as prophesied in the Book of Revelation.

Trump was extremely angry that Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden after the 2020 election, reportedly saying, “He was very early — like, earlier than most. I haven’t spoken to him since. F**k him.”

Needless to say, Donald Trump doesn’t understand any of that, or or care. Someone told him that other presidents didn’t have the guts to move the embassy, so he did it. But that move, along with withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama, definitely gave him credibility with right-wing Jews and the Israeli government, and Trump seemed to have a lovefest with Netanyahu throughout most of his presidency. Then things went off the rails.

It’s been reported earlier that Trump believed that Netanyahu had upstaged him at a White House event and used the opportunity to campaign for himself. But he was extremely angry that Bibi congratulated Joe Biden after the latter’s 2020 election victory, reportedly saying that Netanyahu “was very early — like, earlier than most. I haven’t spoken to him since. F**k him.” Trump believed that he had been instrumental in Netanyahu’s electoral victory (Israel has had so many recent elections it’s hard to keep track) and wanted him to refuse to acknowledge that Biden had won. Later, Trump told Barak Ravid, whose book “Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East” chronicles the Trump/Netanyahu relationship, that the congratulatory video was the main reason Netanyahu lost his next election: “That hurt him badly with the people of Israel,” Trump said. “As you know, I’m very popular in Israel. I think it hurt him very badly.”

So maybe it’s no surprise that during a Trump rally in Florida this week, the ex-president aired his grievances against Netanyahu in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophic Hamas attack on Israel and the early stages of what’s likely to be a protracted war in Gaza. It’s not like we haven’t seen shockingly bellicose rhetoric from U.S. political leaders in recent days, but at least their comments related to vital matters at hand, with thousands of people killed on both sides and news about atrocities and war crimes running on television 24/7.

Early in his Florida speech, Trump shouted “Barack HUSSEIN Obama!” about half a dozen times for no particular reason. It’s an oldie but a goodie, I guess. He shared a previously untold anecdote, which he admitted might be classified information, about the January 2020 assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, saying, “I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down.” He criticized Israel for its intelligence failures and called Israel’s defense minister a “jerk” for warning Hezbollah, the Iranian-supported militia in Lebanon, not to attack Israel from the north. Hezbollah was “very smart,” he said, and that would clue them in that Israel was weak in that region. (Given their history, it seems extremely likely that Israel and Hezbollah know a lot about each other’s strengths and weaknesses.)

Then he recycled his inane anger at Netanyahu for congratulating Biden and actually proclaimed, “If the election wasn’t rigged there would be nobody even thinking about going into Israel.” The Israeli government was not amused by any of this. Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said, “We don’t have to bother with him and the nonsense he spouts.” If only that were true here as well.

In Congress, where Republicans continue to turn the U.S. government into a ludicrous and dysfunctional spectacle by staging one tantrum after another, there wasn’t much blowback to Trump’s bizarre and ill-timed comments. They were all a bunch of cowards, as usual.

There are fault lines within both parties on this issue and we’ll see them play out in coming days and weeks. But Donald Trump’s view that everyone is stupid and disloyal to him, and that if only he were president none of this would be happening, isn’t what any serious person believes. That is about as childish and ignorant as you can get, and that man will almost certainly be the Republican nominee for president in next year’s election anyway. If we went out and grabbed someone off the street to discuss the horrific events of the last week, it’s hard to imagine they could sound less informed than this once and possibly future president. 

Update: Some more reporting from Rolling Stone on this subject

In recent days, Trump has had phone calls with various pro-Israel GOP allies and donors who want to know how Trump would handle Israeli-Palestinian matters if reelected, two sources familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. Trump has relayed a few ideas he has discussed with policy advisers — including cutting off all aid to Palestinians and encouraging other nations to do the same, as well as capturing and extraditing certain Hamas figures. But during these private conversations, Trump has also spent an inordinate amount of time aggressively trashing Netanyahu. 

In a recurring comment Trump has yet to voice publicly, the former president — and former close ally of the Israeli prime minister — has expressed his strong desire for Netanyahu to be gone by the time Trump would potentially be back in office in 2025, the sources recount. Since Hamas attacked Israel on Saturday, Trump has said Netanyahu should be “impeached” by the Israeli Parliament because the assault — which was preceded by an apparently catastrophic intelligence failure on the part of Netanyahu’s government — occurred on his watch. (Israel’s parliament cannot “impeach” a prime minister in the same way Congress can impeach a president in the United States).  

Trump has also asked multiple longtime advisers if he should now publicly call for Netanyahu to step down as prime minister. Some confidants and allies have recently recommended that he not do it this week, as the dead are still being counted and a major war seems underway. […]

In his own private ranting against Netanyahu, Trump has made it abundantly clear that his fury at Netanyahu is driven more by preexisting personal animus than by the Israeli leader’s performance in office during the Gaza offensive. The former president has derisively compared the “very weak” Netanyahu to the majority of American Jewish voters who support Democratic President Joe Biden, and has assailed Netanyahu’s intelligence and alleged corruption. 

Did I mention that he is an imbecile?

Salon