December 2019 Archives

Dear America,

Years ago there was a prominent movie called "Mississippi Burning" about the FBI investigation of the murders of three young voters' rights workers--Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney--just outside Philadelphia, Mississippi.  In the film, the agents used many different tactics to induce the murderers to incriminate themselves, but among them was a meeting that the agents set up at a church while pretending to be other members of the suspect group.  Once the men inside realized that they had been set up, they scrambled out of the church, or so it is depicted in the film, got in their cars and sped away while the FBI agents watched from under cover.  At that point, one agent says to another, "the rattle snakes are starting to bite each other."

I recount that story because of what the agent says it represents: rattle snakes biting each other.  Yesterday, the existence of some emails from members of the White House administration to others both inside and outside of the White House was disclosed to the public.  They're from time periods as specific to the withholding of military aid from Ukraine as 91 minutes after Trump's call with President Zelensky of Ukraine.  There were others from before and after the call, but they all point to the participation of some administration insiders in the scheme with inculpatory particulars of what they were doing and hints as to why.  More people are being drawn into the ambit of the impeachment process as potential witnesses, which means that someone will eventually spill the details all over.  Then others will serially be forced to admit what was done, who said what and why or face perjury charges if they lie, knowing full well that they will be caught because others will scramble to stay above the impeachment fray.  The evidence will pile up, and sooner or later, the one big liar who inspired the plot will be revealed.  Who knows, it might be Mick Mulvaney and not Donald Trump, but if I were you, America, I wouldn't bet the democracy on it.

So here we are, just months after the "whistle blower" complaint hit the airwaves and the whole scheme is unraveling.  Culprits will be named and perhaps even convicted of one thing or another.  But even if not, Republicans, especially any who feel compelled to vote against conviction of Trump in The Senate if there's a trial, will have a lot of explaining to do between then and next November.

My bet for conspirer-in-chief is on Trump himself, and so is that of every Democrat in Washington and those of most of us out here as well.  And it seems imminent that the evidence will be piled so high that even Trump can't make a credible argument to support his more and more palpable lies about what he did and why...why his call with Zelensky was anything but "perfect."  At some point, Trump himself may face a kind of jeopardy that is familiar to all of us who watched Richard Nixon get on a helicopter on the White House lawn, flashing the infamous Nixon broad smile of denial and a victory sign fashioned out of each of his soft, white hands.  Nixon wanted to live his lies until the very end, and he did.  He never had to admit anything because he received a criminal pardon from his vice-president emeritus, Gerald Ford, before he could be questioned in a criminal investigation.  And I suspect that if Trump has sense enough to board that same helicopter under the same circumstances--that is with lies in his teeth that will spill out all over if he so much as opens his mouth...the parallels are striking--he'll take the same tack under advice of counsel.  When they're about to pounce on you, the thing to do is run away, not climb a tree, that is, say nothing; don't wait to be questioned.

Right from the start, it has seemed unlikely that the impeachment process would succeed in the end.  But the likelihood has changed dramatically, and breathtakingly rapidly, over the past week or so since the bill of impeachment passed in The House.  Trump now knows that his tracks have been uncovered and all that remains is for his pursuers to follow them.  It's going to be interesting.  Our blustering president is about to get very quiet, I suspect.  Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah.  

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

The big day is finally here, and it looks like the impeachment of Donald Trump is inevitable.  Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader of The Senate has unabashedly declared that he is deciding the rules of the cognate impeachment trial in cooperation with the White House, presumably with Donald Trump as well, either directly or through surrogates.  What's striking about McConnell is the overt nature of his collusion with Trump and his minions in the corruption of the trial process so as to essentially rig the outcome.  Given the genesis of the whole crisis, one would think that such activities would be at least covert, if not taboo, but it all seems so Republican that no one seems particularly surprised, or much to my chagrin, discomfited.

One of my concerns about the alleged, and in the opinion of most, proven misconduct of Trump is the potential it evinces for our president to seek the kind of permanent franchise over power in this country that his "good friends", Vladimir Putin, R.T. Erdogan and Xi jinping  wield in their countries.  Our president has demonstrated what appears to be his belief in his own entitlement in many ways, but particularly in the impunity he claims to do what he has done to get us to this point in the impeachment.  He has defied congressional subpoenas and ordered others, sometimes without success, not to comply with them as well.  Put concisely, he has displayed his contempt for our system of checks and balances, and I have no doubt that given the chance, he would do away with them.  As for the Republicans, as Shakespeare said in Hamlet's voice, "there's the rub."  I can't be the only one who perceives the threat, and I am willing to bet, in fact we are all betting, that the majority of Americans will too...eventually.

McConnell, acting as Trump's minion on The Hill, is co-opting his own party on The President's behalf, and so far they are going along willingly.  In the height of their dudgeon, they appear almost haughty as they contemn the whole impeachment thus far as if they were narrating a passion play.  But sanctimony notwithstanding, their defense to a claim that they are ignoring the danger to our national democracy that Trump's not-so-subtle ambitious designs constitute would of necessity be pretty thin.  You have to remember that both Putin and Erdogan were elected, so they come from ostensible democracies too, though both men are in fact the kind of autocrats that our civil war was fought to shrug off and that our constitution was devised to preclude.  The significance of that fact is that it is an almost universal commitment in this country that the threat that anyone might ascend to an autocratic presidency is anathema.  So with Trump sanguinely suggesting at a recent rally in Texas that the chanting crowd should ask for twelve more years instead of the traditional four, someone in the mainstream media, on the Senate or House floor, or just a few obscure bloggers like me will inevitably bring up the danger here.  The fact is that failure to sanction Trump for his attempt to extort a political campaign favor from a foreign leader in furtherance of his own political ambitions is just asking for tyranny to reign here as it does in Turkey and Russia at least,  not to mention the potential for something like what prevails in North Korea and China.  Sooner or later, someone is going to point out our jeopardy, and they are going to ask the Republicans why they aren't doing anything about it--why in fact they are abetting it.

That is the rub.  Republicans are flippantly dismissing the whole prospect of impeachment and a trial as mere formalities.  McConnell is almost explicitly saying that they are, and his constituents so far haven't confronted him on that point.  But impeachment is such a solemn process that failure to consider the allegations it comprises with that same solemnity is, dare I say, un-American, so Republicans'  sanctimonious dismissal of the process is risky business.  They consider themselves to be the embodiment of our forefathers' democratic design, but allowing Trump to get away with all he has done so far, and in the subject episode in particular, is far from what the forefathers had in mind.

When the voters go to the polls next November, there is a good chance that they will be brought up short when they go to pull the metaphorical Republican lever this time.  By then, it will have been pointed out that the Republicans for whom they are intending to vote put our freedom up as if it were political ante in their attempt to retain power for the party as a whole.  That kind of self-serving expediency cannot be allowed to prevail as an ethos if our republic is to survive.  Sooner or later, even Republican voters will have to realize that.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Now that articles of impeachment are being voted on in the House Judiciary Committee--presumably they will pass along party lines, both in committee and on the House floor--it is necessary for the American people to stop listening to the embarrassingly partisan sanctimony coming out of the two parties and inform themselves as to the facts.  This is the url at which you can read the "MEMORANDUM OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION" released by the Whitehouse.  As you can see, it comes directly from the Whitehouse with no outside alterations: 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf

The part of the conversation--and I would remind you that this is a memorandum, not necessarily a verbatim transcript--that is relevant is the last six lines of the first partial paragraph on page 4. It reads in part,

 "There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.   Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it...it sounds horrible to me." 

But read the transcript for yourself.  Don't take my, or anyone else's word for what it says.  And if you do read the whole thing you will notice that there is no mention anywhere of the corporation, Barisma, which is the one on which Hunter Biden was on the board.  The only other persons or entities mentioned by Donald Trump in connection with the investigations Trump was requesting were "Crowdstrike"--which is referenced in a somewhat incoherent context: "this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike..."--and Giuliani and Barr as Zelensky's contacts on the matter.  There is no direct reference to the 2016 election, though Trump does connect the investigations he wants to Robert Mueller's investigation, which obviously occurred after the election.  

The second article of impeachment will be for obstruction of justice relating to Trump's prevention of the appearances of some witnesses served with congressional subpoenas: Don McGann, whom Trump asked to get Mueller fired; John Bolton, Trump's former national security advisor, and few others who either defied Trump by testifying or have their subpoenas currently before the courts.  The fact that Trump instructed McGann and a couple of others serially to get attorney general emeritus Jeff Sessions to fire Mueller is essentially undisputed.  The Trump camp, which means the Republican Party, says that it was within Trump's power to do so, believe that to be a defense.  But the Democrats argue that it is a question of why, not whether.  Their point is that Trump was attempting to stop a zealous prosecutor from proceeding out of fear that he, Trump, would be implicated in election tampering.  It's the improper motive that renders Trump's effort to interfere with the investigation of Robert Mueller that is the issue.  In criminal law that would be called "mens rea," or, a guilty mind.\

Of course this will all play out in a much more complicated fashion when Trump is tried by The Senate, but it is important that you, America, keep your eye on the bouncing prize, not on the bouncing ball.  We cannot allow them on either side to distract us from either the real issues or the facts, which are all essentially on record already.  I must admit that I see the facts as already sufficient to demonstrate the guilty mind of our sociopathic president.  His demonstrable corruption of spirit, narcissism, megalomania  and amorality are, I must admit, beside the point relative to his impeachment.  The question is did he do the deeds alleged, whether you call them bribery, treason or high crimes and misdemeanors, and to determine that, The Senate will have to determine Trump's state of mind when he did the deeds...no easy task when you consider the chaos in his brain that his behavior demonstrates.

It's going to be dirty work.  But someone, in this case The Senate, has do it, and we have to do it too.  

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

This is why we have to get Donald Trump out of office.

Last week, a Saudi air force trainee at an American airbase in Florida somehow managed to get a gun onto the base despite the prohibition against doing so.  He shot and killed three people in cold blood it seems.

In December 2015, an American citizen of Pakistani descent brought his pregnant wife from Pakistan through Saudi Arabia.  She was in Saudi Arabia for about a year while she was vetted to qualify for a green card allowing entry into the United States, which was approved at the end of that year, and she came here to be with her husband in San Bernardino.  Her husband was an employee of the county health service.  Shortly after arrival, she and her husband took guns to the husband's workplace, where a Christmas party was taking place and opened fire.  They killed 14 people and wounded 22 others.

Osama Bin Ladin was a Saudi and his family are major figures in the construction business in Saudi Arabia.  

But despite the fact that Saudi's have been involved so frequently with terrorism, Saudi Arabia is not on the Trump Muslim exclusion list.  Neither is Pakistan, which allows terrorists to shelter in Pakistan just over its border with Afghanistan.  The question all this begs is whether Trump is just dimwitted or is there something in his failure to include those two countries for exclusion?  Is he the dotard that Kim Jong-un says he is or is there some corrupt connection between Trump and these countries?  And then there are his feelings of affiliation for certain world leaders who's best practices we condemn in other places.

Trump continues to take the part of Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and the leader in fact of the country, despite his murder of a former Saudi journalist in Istanbul's Saudi embassy under Salman's aegis.  And Trump refers to R.T. Erdogan as his "good friend" despite Erdogan's acts in Syria against the Kurds and his repressive governance of Turkey.  And of course there is Kim Jong-un himself, with whom Trump has been claiming to have a cordial relationship and exchange of correspondence since the Trump overtures to Kim...overtures that seem never to have been anything but a barely post-pubescent dictator's outmaneuvering of our illustrious president.  Finally there is Vladimir Putin.  Trump has taken Putin's side against his own intelligence community's conclusion that Putin personally ordered and oversaw Russian interference in our election of 2016, which Trump won by the slenderest of margins in the electoral college and lost in the popular election.  Could Trump's attitude toward Putin be gratitude for Russia producing just enough votes in just the right places to give Trump his dubious victory?

It's not the specifics of all these things...and too many others to mention...that are the ultimate concern.  What is more daunting is the frequency, and even eagerness, with which he dives into these relationships that are inimical to American security and adverse to American values.  I often find myself wondering if he is stupid or gullible.  Is he nefarious or hapless.  Is he a threat like Putin, or a threat like Yeltsin.  Is he a fool or an evil conniver.

As I often tell my kids when they contemplate doing risky things, whether the rock hits the melon or the melon hit's the rock, it's bad for the melon. We're the melon in this scenario.

  

Your friend,

Mike

An open letter to Maureen Dowd:

Dear Maureen,

I don't usually read the "Sunday Review" in The Times because I get the paper for facts, not the opinions of others, even those with whom I agree.  But on December 1 I did read it for some reason, and I came across your, or should I say your brother's and sister's love letter to Donald Trump.  I understand that you allow them to control your column every year around Thanksgiving, but maybe that's a bad idea because even Trumpers have to admit that facts matter, and opinions based on fiction have a "malign" (to use a popular word among Trump fans) effect.

As to your sister's admiration for Jim Jordan, I doubt she would admit it if she realized that he does nothing but swear to someone else's lies.  For example, at the televised intelligence committee hearings he insisted in his highest dudgeon that Trump won the electoral college in a "landslide," which is also Trump's favorite way to characterize his electoral college victory.  But the fact is that Trump won the electoral college vote by the smallest margin of any president since Jimmy Carter...except one: good old W.  Bush also gave us the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the worst recession since the Great Depression, won by fewer electoral votes...twice.  Both W and Trump, unlike any other presidents in that era, won with less than 60% of the electoral votes--a dubious distinction that they also share.  But they also share the distinction of winning the presidency by losing the popular vote.  Trump wins there though; he lost by almost three million popular votes.  That's the landslide that Trump lied about and Jordan swore to.

As to your brother, I have no idea what his opinions are based on...certainly not reality.  As to Trump's economy, he inherited eight years of continuous growth from Barrack Obama and managed to add three amounting to the longest continuous period of growth in American history.  But without Obama, Trump would have accomplished nothing.  Obama inherited an economy that was losing 750,000 jobs a month from our old pal W and handed off an economy that was producing over a hundred thousand jobs a month and an unemployment rate down from the rate on the day of his inauguration approaching 10% to about 4.5% when Trump took over.  It's Obama's economy, not Trump's.  It has just continued the trend that Trump inherited.  He didn't create it.

Regarding international affairs, as to Iran and North Korea, Iran has gone back to distilling uranium to fissionable grade since Trump bowed out of the deal that the international community is now failing to save without us.  So Trump's accomplishment with regard to Iran is that he put them back on the path to development of a nuclear bomb.  And as to Trump's bromantic partner in North Korea, he is doing just what he was doing when Trump boasted that he had turned him around as his predecessors had failed to.  North Korea is still testing medium range to long range missiles, and they already have nuclear weapons, so Trump gets a zero for Kim Jong-un.  And let's just not talk about Ukraine.  Then of course there is the wall that Mexico was going to build.

Your brother's admiration for Trump's hardening in the New York construction trade is a little misguided too.  Trump built casinos in Atlantic City and formed management companies to run them.  Then, when the casinos started losing money and sinking into the New Jersey beach sand, Trump sold junk bonds, paid the fees of his management companies, and then wiped out the bond holders in bankruptcy.  He promised a bunch of Polish workers a certain wage if they would come over here and help build Trump Tower, and then paid them less.  When they threatened to sue, he told them that he would tie their lawyers up in court so badly that they would wind up with less than he paid them after attorneys' fees.  Trump wasn't hardened in the construction trade.  He just learned to lie and cheat with the help of his late concilliary, Roy Cohn, and the abetting of his now incarcerated minion, Michael Cohen, Esq.

Finally, Kevin said "God help me," when he talked about leaving God out of oaths taken prior to testimony and House hearings.  Well, through afflatus God helped us all when he caused our founding fathers to proscribe state religions in the very first provision of a list of our democratic rights that Jefferson and the rest inserted into our constitutional Bill of Rights.  And maybe he will help us convict our liar-in-chief as well.

Your friend,

Mike