A former U.S. prosecutor is breaking down the ins and outs of former President Donald Trump's highly publicized lawsuit against the New York Times, three of its reporters, and his niece, Mary Trump. Appearing on MSNBC with Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber, former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance broke down all of the issues with the former president's lawsuit.
Vance began with the questionable timing of Trump's lawsuit. Citing his legal history, she said noted that many of Trump's lawsuits have had ulterior motives. "Trump usually files lawsuits as an aggressive mechanism," Vance noted. "This is his history so he might file a lawsuit to distract from other things that are going on around him."
Since Trump would likely be subjected to the process of discovery, which would require some element of exposure that he typically steers clear of, Vance believes the case could simply be a "stunt, perhaps a fundraising strategy than it is a legitimate effort."
(This one dedicated to Karen, of course.)
It's been another noisy week in Woeland, that place where the world goes to post opinions, snipe at one another, demonstrate people's love of their pets, share pictures of food they are about to consume, praise themselves for their love of God in a variety of languages, and freely give information about themselves to marketers, scammers, and other enterprising tricksters seeking ways to fleece them more successfully.
As we all know, of course, what we see on Facebook depends a lot on just what kinds of "friends" we have, though if you piss away much time on Facebook, as I do, you're going to wind up with a lot of friends that you don't know from a load of hay, as we used to say in the Midwest back in the day. The mystery of how I wound up with so many "friends" with whom I have little or nothing in common will never be solved, of course, but there they are, often turning up to tell share the aforementioned pictures and sometimes tell me how much they don't like the way I think, followed by a picture of their always adorable grandchildren.
The biggest fallacy about our exit from Afghanistan is that there was a "good" way for us to get out. There is no good way to lose a war. With defeat comes humiliation. We were humiliated in the way we pulled out of Kabul — and we should have been, because we believed the lies we had been told right up to the last moment.
The lies we heard at the end of our war in Afghanistan were the same ones we were told, and were only too happy to believe, for 20 long years: that everything was going swimmingly. Remember earlier in the summer when the headlines were about how the Taliban controlled a large percentage of the territory in Afghanistan, but the Afghan government and its supposed army still controlled the provincial capitals and Kabul, and that was where the power was.
RollCall.com serves as something of a "company town" newspaper for Congress. Two stories were published there on September 23 that illustrate, if unintentionally, the true state of our national priorities. A prominently featured story had the headline, "Many lingering questions despite 'framework' for reconciliation offsets." The subheading read, "Democratic leaders say they have narrowed a 'menu of options' on how to pay for sweeping budget package."
The second story, which was featured less prominently, was headlined "House passes major defense policy bill" and subheaded, "Members voted down proposals to reduce authorized spending."
The first measure covers a range of programs designed to help working people and address climate change. It would cost $3.5 trillion over ten years. The second, which was apparently considered less newsworthy, authorized a one-year military budget of $768 billion. If that amount remains the same over the next decade, the ten-year cost would come to $7.7 trillion, more than twice the amount of the Democrats' so-called "sweeping budget package."
The bold policy proposals that make up the Build Back Better (BBB) plan President Biden and Democratic leaders moving through both houses of Congress right now have already won the support of most progressives, 17 Nobel Prize-winning economists, and are popular at large among Americans. But the plan does need selling, especially with some recalcitrant Democrats (looking at you, Sens. Manchin and Sinema) not on board with the need to spend the entire $3.5 trillion—over ten years, mind you—authorized in the reconciliation package. As Democrats learned from the Obamacare experience, it’s not enough to propose good policy; they also have to educate people about the benefits and tout the accomplishment.
Supporters of the plan need the right tools to sell it effectively. Doing so requires talking about numbers and people who need help, for sure. But, supporters also have to link these to the values that it helps represent, an element of politics in which Democrats could do better, generally. Progressives believe in community and fairness, two values that resonate broadly and which our rhetoric should center in order to strengthen the Democratic brand. When promoting the Build Back Better Plan (or any specific issue), we must put those values at the core of our pitch and connect them to every element.
At the staff meeting the other day, one of my fellow teachers turned to me and said he was having trouble seeing.
He rushed home and had to have his blood pressure meds adjusted.
Another co-worker was sent home because one of her students had tested positive for Covid-19 and she had gone over to his desk to help him with his assignment.
I, myself, came home on Friday and was so beat down I just collapsed into bed having to spend the next week going from one medical procedure to another to regain my health.
The teachers are not okay.
(1) FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
In spite of your frustration Jaime, I believe you caught what you were reaching for in your blog. For a reason I've long forgotten, I was lucky enough to write on paper with a pen (maybe a ballpoint if they existed back then) my love for my older daughter in a letter she received not long before she died in an automobile accident. It's a common belief that we share our love for each other while we can, and yet the tragic implication of that notion has kept me from uttering it aloud or in writing and possibly burdening someone else with my unfounded or just "partially founded" anxieties. I've interpreted "hostages to fortune" as our helplessness to prevent tragic events with those we love which would devastate us if imposed by a loved one's misfortune. Over the years, I've learned it has other, sometimes closely related meanings or understandings or both, and sometimes not so close.
The odds are probably around 50-50 that you recall the incident of Trump and the toilet paper stuck to his shoe (see video, above). I rate the odds about even because Americans really seem to have lost the capacity for remembering stuff, a tendency that is even more true where Donald Trump, the ex-president and world-class scumbag, is concerned. He learned the art of doing outrageous things so frequently and in such a variety of ways that it was nearly impossible for Americans, who already had far too much on their plates, to keep track of it all. He said things that seemed to have been crafted to steal George W. Bush's status as the POTUS with the mostest malapropisms. (Trump never did like Dubya, or his brother, Jeb, you may recall.) But when it came to outrageousness, the Donald had never been all talk or tweets. He could shove foreign leaders out of his way so he could make his way to the head of a procession. (Remember that?)
There are many inane rituals that take place in the U.S. Capitol, but none that rival the tiresome conventions around the annual funding of the government known as "raising of the debt ceiling."
It's like Groundhog Day, with Republicans balking at participating and everyone else running around in circles trying to cajole them into getting onboard so the United States doesn't crash the world economy. It is no way to run a country. This year the issues are more acute than usual because the Democratic majority is concurrently trying to pass two very large programs — the bipartisan physical infrastructure bill and the reconciliation bill that contains the vital human infrastructure program that Joe Biden and the party ran on in 2020. It's all coming to a head at the same time.
— from Robert Reich's Substack
Earlier this week, Clarence Thomas told a crowd of more than 800 students and faculty at Notre Dame that the Court shouldn’t be viewed in partisan terms, and that justices don’t base their rulings on “personal preferences.” But if not personal preferences, where exactly do they discover the law? Thomas never said. When asked whether the attorneys presenting oral arguments ever compel him to change his mind, Thomas said, “almost never.”
Last week, the court’s newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, told a crowd in Kentucky that Supreme Court justices are not a “bunch of partisan hacks.”
Methinks they doth protest too much.
[Originally posted at John Stohr's Editorial Board substack. Subscribe here.]
The week began with photographs of white men on horseback cracking whips at Black Haitians at the southern border. The El Paso Times captured images of mounted Border Patrol agents trying to force migrants, carrying food and supplies, back over the Rio Grande into Mexico. This week ended with Joe Biden expressing outrage. "I promise you those people will pay," the president told reporters this morning. "They will be investigated. There will be consequences."
That's good, but the larger problem is that the president keeps accepting the premise of "border security" — an ideologically conservative premise. The first step to reforming the government's attitude and hence policy toward the border is to stop accepting the premise as if the GOP means it. They don't. They don't care about "border security." What they care about is having a tool with which to bully Democratic presidents into doing what they want them to do.
Trump just unleashed an unhinged, barely coherent rant about the possibility President Biden might reveal what was going on in the White House on January 6th, the day Trump tried to finally end, once and for all, any possibility of governmental oversight of his ongoing criminal career. He believed he could follow in the footsteps of grifters before him who’ve taken control of and then drained dry countries from Hungary to Russia, Brazil to Turkey and The Philippines. Most of the world’s autocrats started out as grifters.
Thus it surprises nobody to discover that when Donald Trump and the people around him learned, in mid-November of 2020, that there was absolutely no meaningful voter fraud in that month’s election, they chose, instead of acknowledging the truth, to go ahead with a plan to raise over $200 million dollars (and counting). That even today “President Trump” is sending out one or two fundraising emails a day, each one with the tiny “make this a recurring donation” box pre-checked. And that he’s seizing control of the Republican Party.
The Cyber Ninjas are even more incompetent than we thought. They possessed every shabby opportunity to discredit Joe Biden's Arizona victory, which was the entire point of their slapdash exercise in election chicanery. And what do they come up with? An even stronger Biden win, and fewer votes for Trump.
"No substantial differences" exist between the Ninjas' findings and Maricopa County's official results, already twice audited. So says their draft report, although a possibly conflicting, full report is scheduled for release later today. Perhaps the Ninjas can then redeem themselves.
In fact they took a stab at it in the draft, referencing popular conspiracy theories as valid concerns and, through sheer ignorance, misrepresenting routine election procedures as possible dark doings. All of which, they said, resulted in findings "very close to the margin of error for the election."
The quasi-official history of the Afghan War has now been written by cable news house historians. Key elements:
1. The terrorist organization al-Qaeda was headquartered in Afghanistan at the time of 9/11 and so HAD to be destroyed to prevent further attacks on our Homeland. It was a “war of necessity,” as President Obama said as he continued it. The allied forces succeeded in killing hundreds of terrorists and driving al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. And there has not been another 9/11. It was a success. That’s the MAIN point.
2. The Taliban, the organization governing Afghanistan, had been hosting al-Qaeda and was/is itself a terrorist organization. It had to be toppled also, to prevent future terrorist attacks on the Homeland. The allied forces accomplished this goal successfully too, with ease, within weeks.
For a view of the real-life fallout of the far right campaign to stamp out the teaching of the history of U.S. racism and its legacy today, meet James Whitfield.
Whitfield is the first Black principal at Colleyville Heritage High School in largely white Colleyville, Texas—a town sandwiched between Dallas and Fort Worth.
On September 20, to the outrage of students and many community members, the nearly all white Grapevine-Colleyville school board voted to not renew Whitfield's contract, an almost certain first step in his termination.
While district officials tried to dress up the action with claims that Whitfield has been "unreasonable" and "disrespectful," the whole town, region, and even national media had little doubt about his real offense.
COVID-19 or Libertarianism
The carnage brought to the American working middle class and working class by the COVID-19 variants is a trauma to the nation.
More troubling is the number of people unnecessarily passing away from the COVID-19 virus due to the utter political cynicism and neglect of the Trump administration.
In February 2021 the Lancet Commission reported that 40 percent of COVID-19 deaths could have been averted were it not for the Trump administration’s mishandling of the public health crisis.
— from Foreign Policy In Focus
For over 50 years I have been writing about foreign policy — mostly America’s, but those of other nations as well. I think I have a pretty good grasp of places like Turkey, China, India, Russia, and the European Union. I regret that I am less than sure-footed in Africa and Latin America.
During this time I have also learned a fair amount about military matters and various weapons systems, because they cost enormous amounts of money that could be put to much better use than killing and maiming people. But also because it’s hard to resist the absurd: the high performance US F-35 fighter jet — at $1.7 trillion, the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history — that costs $36,000 an hour to fly, shoots itself, and can decapitate pilots who attempt to bail out. There are, as well, the $640 toilet seats, the $7,622 coffee maker, and the fact that the Department of Defense cannot account for $6.5 trillion in spending.
I have also become fairly conversant with the major nuclear arms agreements, and I know what Article VI of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty says (more on this later).
At a district school board meeting, Malachi Suarez, a fourth grader at Fresno's Polk Elementary, makes the case for changing the school's name.
On July 27, a brave young boy named Malachi Suarez, a fourth grader at Fresno, California’s Polk Elementary school, stepped up to the podium at a meeting of his district school board, and gave everyone a history lesson about James K. Polk, the 11thU.S. president.
“I believe in freedom, justice, quality and community. These are some of the main principles of America and our school district. I believe that community is when we try to do what is best or better for everyone or most people. I am asking that you rename Polk Elementary because Polk was against these principles.
“Polk believed that one group of people was superior to every other and more deserving. That is called Manifest Destiny. It is the idea that non-European Americans are inferior and do not belong here. Many people like me were killed because of this. Eighty-five percent of our student population would be considered inferior.
[Originally posted at John Stohr's Editorial Board substack. Subscribe here.]
Let's set aside the distant possibility of the United States government defaulting on its debt. Despite what you are reading and hearing, there is no real chance of that happening. The United States Congress is going to raise the debt ceiling. Whether this game of chicken has any real-world effect — whether it lowers the US rating among crediting agencies, as transpired the last time around — is a different matter.
Make no mistake, though. It's a game of chicken and the Republicans in the United States Senate are winning. I would say, if we're going to be honest with ourselves, that the Republicans are humiliating the Democrats. Democratic allies are laboring mightily to obscure that.
They are pointing the finger at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, accusing him of hypocrisy. When he was in charge, the Senate GOP raised the cap, no questions asked, with the help of the Democrats. Now that he's not, he and all of the Senate Republicans are voting against raising the cap, despite knowing full well that if it isn't lifted, it would mean economic calamity for the country and the world.
New York’s Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent Met Gala dress caused a stir for sporting the bold message “Tax the Rich.” The progressive lawmaker, who is known for being media-savvy, donned a simple white gown with the blood-red wording emblazoned across the back, designed by a Brooklyn-based brand called Brother Vellies.
Attending the gala on a free ticket (wealthy elites usually pay tens of thousands of dollars to be seen at the annual event known for its outrageous and eye-catching fashion), Ocasio-Cortez seized the opportunity to amplify her simple, yet powerful, political message. She explained to the press, “When we talk about supporting working families and when we talk about having a fair tax code, oftentimes this conversation is happening among working and middle class people (on) the senate floor.”
She added, “I think it’s time we bring all classes into the conversation.” In other words, she was aiming her message of higher taxation of the wealthy directly at the faces of those elites, with the press as witness.
Tucker Carlson has some serious freedom that most Americans would love to also have.
I’m not talking about the economic freedom he got from being born a multimillionaire trust-fund-baby heir to the Swanson Frozen Food fortune; his freedom to promote weird, racist conspiracy theories every night on TV ad nauseum; or even his white privilege freedom to drive down the street and not fear getting pulled over or killed by a racist cop.
I’m talking about his freedom to do his job every day in a Covid-free environment. Tucker’s got it, big time, and most Americans would love to have it, especially those who have to deal with the public.
Fox “News” is one of the American workplaces that absolutely mandates that their employees must be vaccinated to work there or they will make life pretty miserable for you.
— from Robert Reich's Substack
OMG! The DEBT CEILING FIGHT is back.
Many of you may be asking yourself: what the hell is the debt ceiling? In brief, it’s the limit on how much the government is allowed to borrow to pay for what it already owes on bills Congress has already agreed on and enacted — not for legislation that’s currently being debated. If it’s not raised, the government can’t pay its bills (just as if you or I didn’t pay our credit card bill). That would result in a default, which would mean chaos. Your variable-rate mortgage, for example, would go through the roof. The full faith and credit of the United States would be undermined.
The current debt ceiling has to be raised to pay for debt racked up by Republicans as well as Democrats, including trillions under the former guy. Senate Democrats raised the ceiling for Trump, so why won’t Mitch McConnell and his Senate Republicans do it now for Biden?
A major split is unfolding on social media and behind closed doors over the report that the pro-Trump contractors hired by the Arizona Senate Republicans to "audit" the state's 2020 presidential election will deliver to legislators on Friday.
The angry debate centers on what claims and evidence about the accuracy of the election results from Maricopa County will be included in the much-delayed report. Maricopa is Arizona's most populous jurisdiction and home to Phoenix. Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by 45,109 votes in Maricopa County and 10,457 votes statewide.
On one side of this split are the Cyber Ninjas, the Senate's lead contractor, and that firm's subcontractors—almost all of whom have had no prior election auditing experience and have said on social media that they believed Biden was not legitimately elected. On the other side are the Arizona Senate's lawyers and the Senate's unpaid liaison to the audit, former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, a Republican, who want a credible and legally defensible report.
On September 15, 2021, the heads of government of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States announced the formation of AUKUS, “a new enhanced trilateral security partnership” between these three countries. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined U.S. President Joe Biden to “preserve security and stability in the Indo-Pacific,” as Johnson put it.
While China was not explicitly mentioned by these leaders at the AUKUS announcement, it is generally assumed that countering China is the unstated motivation for the new partnership. “The future of the Indo-Pacific,” said Morrison at the press conference, “will impact all our futures.” That was as far as they would go to address the elephant in the room.
As a religious studies professor, I know a parable when I see one. Consider the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the final events in this country's war in Afghanistan as just such a parable taken directly from the history of our moment.
The heart-wrenching last days of that war amounted to a cautionary tale about the nature of violence and the difficulty Americans have honestly facing their own version of it. As chaos descended on Kabul, and as the Biden administration's efforts to evacuate as many Afghans and Americans as possible were stretched to the limit, one more paroxysm of senseless violence took center stage.
A suicide bomber sent by the Islamic State group ISIS-K struck Kabul's airport, killing and maiming Afghans as well as American troops. The response? More violence as a Hellfire missile from an American drone supposedly took aim at a member of the terror group responsible. The U.S. military announced that its drone assassination had "prevented another suicide attack," but the missile actually killed 10 members of one family, seven of them children, and no terrorists at all. Later, the Pentagon admitted its "mistaken judgment" and called the killings "a horrible tragedy of war."
Follow us
Become a fan
Subscribe