It's All Right

 

President Biden has announced that he is issuing a pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, and for one thing--good. 

Although he had previously said he wasn't going to, I rather hoped he would and am not one bit disappointed. If the power of the pardon is supposed to be for the sake of mercy--why not one's own son? Is his son less deserving by virtue of blood? And if the father seriously believes that the son was persecuted and prosecuted for his political sake, is that not something he can at least do for him?

Some are calling it an "abuse of power." A pardon is an official act. I don't even understand what that argument is supposed to mean. Is he gaining something other than his son not being further punished? 

Is it a norm? Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother, Roger. George H. W. Bush granted clemency to his son. Neil. Trump pardoned his daughter's father-in-law, Charles Kushner, and has now appointed him to an ambassadorship. You tell me: what is a norm, here? 

If someone wants to say it enrages MAGAs, again: good. They can bite their My Pillows in rage. They are outraged by things all the time. It's what they do. I don't care.

Kamala Harris, For the People

 

As she began her speech to accept the nomination of the Democratic party, Kamla Harris thanked the audience--a lot. One social media commenter, perhaps a bit confused by the concepts of both gratitude and subtlety, wondered why she was saying "Thank you" quite so much, but most people understood why--

She was grateful for the applause of course, but she wanted to get down to business. The "thank yous" were a signal to the audience to stop clapping because she had a speech to do. And I loved that. Oh, I have seen people bask in well-deserved applause--it's fine. But being ready t get started and move forward was so on point for Kamala Harris.

This truly was the speech of a public servant who cares about what she does and who she does it for. Her biography let us know her dedication to getting things done, to doing them well--and not "half-assed". We learned what motivates her, what she has done, and what she will do for the people--the only client she has ever served. And she drew a contrast between herself and a certain someone who only serves himself. 

The Inflection Point

The presidency of Joseph Robinette Biden in one term has given so much to this country, and the simple message of this speech, that the idea of America is bigger than any one man's ambition, is the simple reason why. This man loves his country and believes in us as a people because of what we can be. This speech shows a faith in us, in "We, the People", that is touching and heartfelt. 

This faith in our future and admiration for our best values as a creedal nation are what we need going forward--there can be no turning back. Biden understands that that future doesn't depend on himself alone, but on all of us.

I also know who doesn't understand that and rejected it when presented with that choice--even with violence.  

I am even more determined to support Kamala Harris because we cannot go back. We cannot go back.

TWGB: This Situation is not Hypothetical

 

In today's SCOTUS hearing, Samuel Alito argued that immunity for former presidents is good, actually, because without it, ex-presidents might refuse to leave office peacefully if they lose reelection...

Make it make sense. https://t.co/HepJVcgN2Q

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) April 25, 2024

If I were to take Justice Alito as a good-faith interrogator adhering to the actual facts of the Trump presidency--the actual president this case is about, and not some future generic president we're just having a classroom thought-experiment about, are we supposed to play along and imagine a path where 1/6 does not happen because Trump can rest safe in his bed at Mar-a-Lago certain that no ill shall befall him, because he had immunity. So, he just gracefully turns over the keys to the established firm:

And maybe that even means he is just fine keeping those documents from the White House that he doubtless acquired during his presidency--several boxes of, in fact--and selling them, because we are just going to assume a president does official things officially, and not shady-ass criminal stuff because one has always been a shady-ass criminal? 

On a day where Justice Brown-Jackson noted that immunity (or should we rather call it, impunity?) would turn the Oval Office into a center of criminal activity, we received testimony that Hope Hicks and Sarah Huckabee Sanders were in contact--via their White House offices, with David Pecker regarding the election interference/hush money cover-up scheme. 

TWGB: All Trump Wants for Christmas

 

Well, it's not hard to figure out what Trump wants for Christmas, since it's all been put into a filing available to the public: he wants immunity!  Some people might want their day in court and to be found innocent and to clear their good name. 

He would like to very much not have that conversation out loud if we can at all. His lawyers are claiming that everything he did while president counts as an official act (I guess they mean everything: official Tweets, official watching tv, official golfing, and probably official trips to the bathroom--since that also covers "document handling") and he wasn't convicted by the Senate at his impeachment, so if that was good enough for them, it's good enough for him. 

It's a fantasy. It starts out with a wonderful supposition: 

"During the 234 years from 1789 to 2023, no current or former president had ever been criminally prosecuted for official acts. That unbroken tradition died this year, and the historical fallout is tremendous," the Trump filing reads. "The indictment of President Trump threatens to launch cycles of recrimination and politically motivated prosecution that will plague our nation for many decades to come and stands likely to shatter the very bedrock of our republic—the confidence of American citizens in an independent judicial system."

We are to believe it would seem, that the officeholders from 1789 to January 20, 2017 may have been simply lousy with crime, but were not prosecuted due to...tradition?  And we are not invited to contemplate the fallout from a president being told that literally anything they do and label an "official act" is without legal consequence? And he's handing that same card to our current sitting president?

Lordy. I think Santa definitely puts one on the naughty list for this kind of jackassery. 

A Pretty Presidential Paradox

 

So, speaking of threading needles, I think the Colorado decision is a case of trying to get an entire camel through a needle's eye. It posits, in great detail, that the President of the United States is absolutely responsible for inciting the insurrection. Whoo boy, is he! 

Judge Wallace’s assessment of Mr. Trump’s behavior before and on Jan. 6 was damning, and, notably, she rejected his lawyers’ argument that the First Amendment protected him. His words and actions, she wrote, met the criteria set by the Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio for distinguishing incitement from protected speech.

“Trump acted with the specific intent to incite political violence and direct it at the Capitol with the purpose of disrupting the electoral certification,” she wrote. “Trump cultivated a culture that embraced political violence through his consistent endorsement of the same.”

Referring to his speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, in which he told his supporters that they needed to “fight like hell” and that they were justified in behaving by “very different rules,” Judge Wallace said, “Such incendiary rhetoric, issued by a speaker who routinely embraced political violence and had inflamed the anger of his supporters leading up to the certification, was likely to incite imminent lawlessness and disorder.”

But would he be barred from running for office as if he was, like, an officer of the United States at the time? Like an officer-officer. A guy with an office?  Weeeeelllllll....

Color me skeptical*. I always thought the person in the Oval Office was sort of like the CEO of the country. It's an executive office. Trump was the officeholder when all of this went down. It feels like deciding he is responsible, but escapes being treated as an officeholder because of the unique nature of his office is a bit of a cop-out. It's like saying "The buck stops with the president" but you can fling it anywhere but at Trump. 

I do like the part where the blame for the insurrection is very solidly laid at his feet though--that's a good start.

*All disclaimers about getting most of my idea about law from television shows pertain.

Never Gonna Be President

Even though one of the recurring themes of my blog is the widening gulf between the right and the left in this country, it came as a bit of a surprise to me to see a recent story that suggested that Fox News white supremacist and trust fund douche nozzle Tucker Carlson was under serious consideration for a 2024 GOP presidential run.

I mean really, sure, Donald Trump has a lot of BIG White Supremacist and Trust Fund Douche Nozzle energy, but is that the direction they think is....good actually? Because it really sounds like it is. The blather about "blah, blah party bankrupt and blah, blah swamp" really sounds to me like someone uncomfortably assembling a fig-leaf jock strap expecting to get hit in the jollies with the sad truth: The GOP has been selling tax cuts and bigotry for so long it forgot there ever was anything else. And no one stands up for free trade, or talks about the debt, or worries about Russia or national security, or basic fucking competence in the face of a pandemic, because they are all little people milling around Trump, who is an idiot. And they will do the same for Tucker Carlson, who is a younger, better-looking idiot?

The idea should be appalling. But this was seriously put forth, so, let's really look at Tucker Carlson, right the fuck now. Because he's shitting on a Somali-born Muslima congresswoman who is speaking up for ending oppression within various necessary systems (she is not, however, calling for the end of the entire US way of life, but thanks to multiple conservative media outlets and several high-profile elected figures like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for letting us know that they consider oppression and the American way of life are so neatly intertwined--I, like Rep. Omar, want to believe we can very well do the American Way without oppression--thanks!) and calling a decorated Thai-American US Senator and veteran Tammy Duckworth every damn nasty thing he can think of.

Scoundreltown

There is a saying to the effect that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and I guess it looks a little bit to me like some folks want to set up a flag-draped resort community and throw stones from their little red white and blue glass bungalows. Of course, it's the Squad, alleged Ayatollah sympathizers, who can't be patriotic enough, or even deserving of PTSD if they came up in a war zone. According to the new hymnal,  Democrats are supposedly "in love with terrorists" now, as Rep. Doug Collins wants to put it, prompting veteran and Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth to respond explicitly:

"I left parts of my body in Iraq fighting terrorists." Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who lost both of her legs serving in the Iraq War, ripped into the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee who has accused Democrats of being "in love with terrorists." https://t.co/2NpcDSyWdk

— CNN (@CNN) January 10, 2020

I don't expect Republicans to feel the sting of that one. I remember Max Cleland, who also left body parts behind, having his patriotism questioned, too.  I remember how scurrilous lies against John Kerry (who was later integral to the Iran nuclear deal and speaks about it eloquently) led to propaganda against his presidential campaign that also had some confused partisans practically mocking all purple heart recipients.

I know Trump had no problem mocking John McCain's service, or feuding with Gold Star families (plural--more than once). All the more reason for Collins to rethink his sycophancy for Trump if he really cared about who supports Gold Star families. (Trump, by the way, penalized Gold Star families with his tax plan, habitually lies about who achieved the veteran's CHOICE bill (it was a McCain-Sanders bill, signed by Obama)  and has given lip service to reducing troop levels in our wars abroad while raising troop levels.

Is She Trying too Hard?

“The only ones mourning the loss of Soleimani are our Democrat leadership and Democrat Presidential candidates.” pic.twitter.com/IZJJqpxkBE

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) January 7, 2020

I did not notice a single Democrat actually mourning this guy, so much as taking notice of his being a murderer or a bad guy or whatever, but I did notice this:

The first station for #Soleimani’s funeral was #Ahvaz, the funeral continues in #Mashhad, then #Tehran, #Qom, and #Kerman... probably this is the biggest ever funeral in the history of #Iran pic.twitter.com/ngpCAUYDfH

— Ali Hashem علي هاشم (@alihashem_tv) January 5, 2020

It is true that in repressive states, it is possible for a crowd to be compelled; we can question, perhaps, if the crowd of mourners of Kim Jong-Il was fully representative of legitimate national feeling. But the anti-US sentiment, regardless of whether the people of Iran genuinely mourn for Soleimani, the man, or the man as a symbol of resistance against the west, should not be ignored by a person who means to be taken seriously. The crowd for this man's funeral makes Trump's inauguration look like a small child's birthday party. The supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini himself was moved to tears. Many people have now vowed revenge. Wasting her time on partisanship instead of focusing on Iran's reaction is puerile, at best. I hate to say what it is at worst.

Once again, we can see that Haley would like to be taken seriously by certain people in her party's base. But how can she be taken in any way at all when dressed up in the costume of a pander bear? I'd counsel her to stop before she embarrasses herself if I cared for her, but actually, if she has the water skis, I would rather point her in the direction of a shark.

Or He Could Just Be Batshit

“I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder,” ⁦@realDonaldTrump⁩ tells people who rushed to help at the Twin Towers on #911. pic.twitter.com/HI2N7ffJOL

— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) July 29, 2019

There wasn't a whole heck of a lot I had to say about Trump's messy, racist, Twittering weekend, which still wasn't apparently over as of this morning. I disagree with the opinion that this is strategy, though, based on things like the above comment Trump just made regarding what he was doing on 9/11--which is definitely contentious, let's stop pretending this is strategy. He's a narcissist.

He wants people to only say good things about him. He lashes out when people say bad things about him. He'll say good things about himself whether they are true or not. Rep. Cummings got Trump "in his feels" as the kids say these days because he's actually doing his congressionally-mandated job of oversight. Trump went on a Twitter-rampage to self-soothe. It just comes off as if Trump is trying to engineer a race war because 1) Trump watches a lot of Fox News and 2) is pretty racist, but let's not overthink it.

He could just be batshit.

What is POTUS Doing?

Trump’s racist screed against Omar was scripted and came off the teleprompter: CNN’s Camerotahttps://t.co/J6URnBRze0 pic.twitter.com/M3EbNP86K6

— Raw Story (@RawStory) July 18, 2019

Whipping up a crowd into a racist frenzy with the full and calculated support of his staff, all of whom would, in a fair and just world, now be poisonous and unemployable. That's all.


UPDATE: Even though the eventual chant from the crowd at the hatenanny was completely encouraged:

Lara Trump to the crowd just now in #Greenville: "If you don’t love our country — the president said it..."

"Leave!" the crowd replied.

— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) July 17, 2019

And even if the sentiments involved are exactly his very own sentiments:

"Send her back" happened at 7:45pm. LATER on at the rally, at 7:57, Trump said "If they don't like it, let them leave. Let them leave. They are always telling us how to run it, how to do this. You know what? If they don't love it, TELL THEM to leave it."

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 18, 2019

He's going to claim he did not care for how that crowd behaved:

JUST IN: Trump claims he tried to stop rally crowd's "send her back" chants despite letting them run for over 10 seconds https://t.co/xGK2VkGjaa pic.twitter.com/sh7Y9UJNMG

— The Hill (@thehill) July 18, 2019

Daaaaaaammmmnnnn, Trump Fans. You went and embarrassed him in front of the normals. What do you even have to say for yourselves?

As for what Trump is doing right now, it's called gaslighting. Who do you believe, him or your lying eyes and ears?

The First President, Ol' Whatsisname

 

 

 

From Politico: 

 

President Donald Trump had some advice for George Washington.

During a guided tour of Mount Vernon last April with French president Emmanuel Macron, Trump learned that Washington was one of the major real-estate speculators of his era. So, he couldn’t understand why America’s first president didn’t name his historic Virginia compound or any of the other property he acquired after himself.

Ah, yes. The father of our country could really have been something if he only had more places names after him. Like the capitol city or an entire state or something? Or he could have been joking.

It's very hard to tell.

The Bride at Every Wedding

It really is something, isn't it, to know that on the occasion of the burial of the brutally slain, some people were able to show great respect to "the Office of the President".

Just so you know why it was important for him to be there. To be publically president at people, whether they wanted him there, or not.

UPDATE:

One guy was even particularly nice to him, so people should vote for that guy. Those other people, well...

I' m not sure people were aware they were being graded on their grieving.

Certainly the Products of a Healthy Mind

I am sure it is very reasonable, right, to bitch about his Twitter follower count and put scare quotes around the word "Bomb" during an ongoing domestic terror investigation--in his own mind. I also think actually reasonable people would agree with CNN that there's something not really "Presidential", here.

My Condolences to the Families of the Niger Four

There is an incredible back-and-forth regarding the four deceased service members who were on a mission in Niger and were killed by an ambush attack from as many as 50 ISIS-linked combatants. Somehow, the story has been diverted from the nature of their mission and the purpose and reasons for their sacrifice, and has become a strange debate on the nature of how we recognize the ultimate sacrifice of our military personnel and the appropriate observances that should be made.

These were, by all accounts, excellent people from differing backgrounds, but united in a desire to exercise their skills with a sense of purpose.  What we know of the expected White House response to their unfortunate end was that a good statement was made regarding their service and the importance of their mission (in Niger, both ISIS and Boko Haram have been known to operate, and Niger is also well-known for uranium). This well-crafted statement was never delivered. 

“Melania and I are heartbroken at the news that three U.S. service members were killed in Niger on October 4 while providing guidance and assistance to Nigerien security force counter-terror operations. We offer our deepest condolences to the families and friends of these brave American soldiers and patriots. They will remain in our thoughts and prayers.

"We are also praying for the two U.S. service members who were injured in the incident. We wish them a complete and swift recovery.

"The heroic Americans who lost their lives yesterday did so defending our freedom and fighting violent extremism in Niger. Our administration and our entire nation are deeply grateful for their sacrifice, for their service, and for their patriotism.”

What we had instead was a nearly two-week period of silence from the White House regarding the deaths of these service members, despite news reports, until a reporter questioned President Trump about these men in a Rose Garden press conference on Monday.  That was when Trump, apparently unguardedly, spoke offhand about the event.

QUESTION: Why haven't we heard anything from you so far about the soldiers that were killed in Niger? What do you have to say about (OFF-MIKE)? TRUMP: I've written them personal letters. They've been sent, or they're going out tonight, but they were written during the weekend. I will, at some point during the period of time, call the parents and the families, because I have done that traditionally.

I felt very, very badly about that. I always feel badly. It's the toughest -- the toughest calls I have to make are the calls where this happens. Soldiers are killed. It's a very difficult thing. Now, it gets to a point where, you know, you make four or five of them in one day -- it's a very, very tough day. For me, that's by far the toughest.

So the traditional way -- if you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn't make calls. A lot of them didn't make calls. I like to call when it's appropriate, when I think I am able to do it.

The problem with this statement is that as far as we know, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama did call, or send letters. Often. But it's complicated. Sometimes people could not always be reached, or someone was reached and someone was not, and they felt some way, or whatever other purely human distraction caused a disruption between the intent of the occupant of the White House and the bereaved. Human interactions are often fraught, and those who have suffered losses often do experience a need to understand blame or fault or the reason for the catastrophe that had come into their lives. It isn't always even rational, however necessary that process might be to finding an end to the grieving.

Hello--Goodbye

As noted the other night, Bannon's time art the White House was, indeed, about to draw to a close (although I'm pretty sure his presence will still be felt.) With Bannon's ouster, the betting window is now taking serious money for how long Sebastian Gorka will remain--I've never really been entirely sure what his job was, myself. I'm not really even sure what the impact on the White House will be--people who did not care for Bannon and thought his associations with the so-called "alt-right" were bad might feel that Bannon's leaving matters, but I can't help but note--Trump remains.

This was a week for other departures as well. After several CEO's left the president's Manufacturing Council and Strategy and Policy Forum, Trump ended them so that they could stop quitting on him. As a tidy capper to Infrastructure Week, Trump also wrapped up plans for an Infrastructure Council by scrapping it. Billionaire Carl Icahn will no longer advise Trump. (Steve Mnuchin's Yale classmates would like him to do the same.)

And the membership of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities sent Trump a "Dear Don" letter, which cleverly spelled out: "resist". His faith advisors are also concerned with what the president has been saying this past week. Pastor A.R. Bernard stepped down.

No wonder, then, that the President and the First Lady will not be attending the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony this coming December--he feels unwanted. I suggest that Trump doesn't have "personnel" problems--he has a Trump problem, and he takes it wherever he goes.

UPDATE: I forgot about all the Digital Council resignations. My apologies. There are just so many.

Happy *Most But Not All* Presidents Day!

This is basically either not normal or the new normal.

I genuinely wonder if we'll be doing the same thing next year.

It's So Hard to Say Goodbye

There's something that struck me as very poignant in the image of the empty frames lining the walls of the West Wing (well done, David Nakamura/WP). The "ghostly" quality of the empty frames prompts the mind to refill them with memory. It is hard to say "goodbye" to an exceptional president and his exceptional family. It will never be hard to recall them.

(Damn everyone seems so young there. Those little girls became young women before our eyes.)

The trust and affection of the Obama/Biden partnership always seemed unforced, natural, a real "friendship goals" situation.

I missed blogging about the State of the Union

Missed President Obama's final #SOTU last night? Check out his full remarks. https://t.co/7KHp3EHK8D

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 13, 2016

I always do this--I find there's some major event to do political blogging about, blow it off for something more interesting like getting a decent night's sleep, and then find that I am blog-blocked until I get a few paragraphs about it out of the way. So here goes:

It was a good speech in that it was optimistic about what the US can achieve together as a nation. President Obama said it would be shorter than previous SOTU speeches, and I think it was, barely. I think expressing a commitment to investing in a cure for cancer is a an admirable goal, and putting VP Biden in charge of it is a great idea because he is a very motivated person of great capability. This kind of government pledge to start a "War on Cancer" had been previously declared by President Nixon, but I think the past four decades have given us more reason to be hopeful--take a look at the immunotherapy that has resulted in President Carter's cancer being undetectable.

I think one of the more positive things about the evening was that there wasn't a whole bunch of rebuttals--SC Governor Nikki Haley gave the Republican rebuttal and I think she did fine. It's not an easy act to follow, she was maybe a little stiff, but she didn't say anything weird, reach about for beverages, or wear a really distracting tie. For a position where the bar is "not screwing up"--she gets an A for not screwing up. She spoke in favor of the US being a welcoming and diverse nation and for civility in politics. It kind of astounds me that this was found objectionable by some far-right voices like Ann Coulter (who Tweeted that her Fatherland Figure Donald Trump should deport the Governor of SC--who was born here! Seriously?)

Conflicted about Ted Cruz

You know, I was all about to write a "poor Ted" piece about what a shame it is that folks as diverse as Sen. John McCain (who has no real love for "wacko birds")and Ann Coulter (the Electra of the Wronged Right who finally has found her Fatherland Figure) are now questioning Sen. Cruz's citizenship requirement to be President in the wake of Donald Trump playing a game of "just asking questions"--I was gonna, but wow:



Something about him makes even decency just a little difficult.