Annotated Statement: Trump Responds to the Manafort Plea

It took a while, but Trump finally responded to Paul Manafort coming to his senses and agreeing to cooperate with Robert Mueller's team.  Of course, he responded on Twitter.  Of course, it was not worth the power it takes to display it on a computer or phone screen.  Here it is with my annotations.

While my (our) poll numbers are good, 

Which ones?  Approval among the ever-shrinking number of self-identified Republicans?  Unless you're talking about that, you owe us an explanation as to what polls you're talking about, because I've not seen one that reflects the version of reality that you're peddling.

with the Economy being the best ever, 

By what metrics?  By what actions of yours?  The POTUS gets to much credit and blame for the state of the economy, and someone who thinks they can just "print more money" should not be taking credit for any skillful stewardship of the economy.

if it weren't for the Rigged Russian Witch Hunt, 

A "Rigged" "Witch Hunt" is redundant.  Leaving that aside for a moment, the "rigging" your referring to is actually the mechanisms of the justice system that are intended to seek the truth while respecting the civil liberties of the citizens.  As for the "Witch Hunt" claim, the volume of convictions and pleas among your floundering excuse for an administration should make it clear that the only way this is a "Witch Hunt" is if you have a lot of people commuting to the White House on brooms.

they would be 25 points higher! 

You're a pollster now?  What do you base this one?

Highly conflicted Bob Mueller 

What conflict?  The golf dues membership thing?  The interview for FBI director thing?  Really?  That's a conflict in your mind, but you think that Jeff Sessions did you dirty by recusing himself from Russia related investigations as AG?  Your lack of logical consistency is astounding.

& the 17 Angry Democrats

You have not provided one bit of evidence of the political affiliation of any of the prosecutors on Mueller's team or any evidence of why it would matter even if they were all Democrats.  Typically, Special / Independent Counsel are of the opposite party of the POTUS / target.  You have a Republican running yours.  Quit you whining, especially until you have some basis for anything your saying.

are using this Phony issue 

EVIDENCE!!! There is tons of EVIDENCE!!! Even if nothing wrong happened, we would be stupid to ignore the EVIDENCE!!!

to hurt us in the Midterms.  

They're investigating real crimes.  Don't want to be hurt electorally by crimes, don't hire criminals.

No Collusion!

Then let Mueller do his job and you shut up and do yours.

Fear(ful) Thoughts

Assuming that the reporting and sources in Bob Woodward's book about the early stages of the Trump Administration are accurate (which I do for the most part), there are two things that serve as massive warning flags that anybody who cares about the nation's physical and economic security should be absolutely terrified of.  Neither of then has anything to do with Russian conspiracies or obstruction of justice.  Both of them are troubling on their own, but both are also indicative of massive deficiencies in Donald Trump's ability to comprehend the complexities of the world we live in.

The first thing that frightens me is how Donald Trump is unable to comprehend the argument that all of the military assistance and the troops we have stationed in South Korea are actually to the benefit of the United States.  He apparently fixated on the fact that the United States was paying for a missile defense system in South Korea and was livid that the Koreans were not paying for it.  The fact that there was nearly a fifteen minute difference in the United States' ability to detect a North Korean missile launch and, therefore fifteen extra minutes to shoot it down before it could reach the United States, was apparently lost on him.

There were other intricacies to the benefits to the United States of our relationship with South Korea that numerous officials tried to explain to Trump, but his failure to grasp even this most simple of them is demonstrative of a startling lack of sophistication by Trump.  That is not to say that Trump would ultimately need to agree with those arguing to keep the South Korea relationship as it was.  The problem is that he did not even seem to grasp their arguments, even as simple as they were. 

The other main source of fear, at least for me, was Trump's utter disregard of facts in the realm of economics.  This came up in the realm of his obsession with trade deficits as a barometer for economic success.  There is an account of an attempt to explain why trade deficits do not work the way Trump thinks they do, particularly in the context of the United States' transition to a service (as opposed to manufacturing) economy.  When backed into a corner on his thinking, and confronted with all of the data to the contrary, Trump would simply say (paraphrasing) "This is what I think, I've thought it for 30 years, and if you don't agree with me you are wrong."

At one point, this came in the context of tariffs against China.  It was explained to Trump that if China wanted to retaliate, they could raise the prices on antibiotics, of which they make the VAST majority consumed in the United States or they could refuse to export them to the United States.  The United States buy them from a third party country.  Germany was used as an example.  Germany would mark them up to take a cut of the profit, like any middle-man would do.  Trump's response (again, paraphrasing, but this one is pretty close): "Then we'll buy from another country."

There is no shortage of examples of people in the administration trashing Trump in the book.  They call him all sorts of variation of stupid.  Those are the quotes getting most of the attention.  There were moments in the book that left me thinking, "Trump actually seemed to treat that particular situation with the gravity it deserved, regardless of whether I agreed with the outcome."  Such moments were in defiance of my expectations and offered brief hopes of improvement to come. 

Those moments usually were quickly followed by another demonstration of Trump's disregard for the value of facts or the way the government is supposed to work.  It are Trump's own words that are the most fear inducing.  They betray a lack of sophistication.  They betray an (at best) outdated and juvenile idea of how countries and the world operate.  The realization that we have a willfully ignorant man unable or unwilling to consider that leading the United States is not the same as running a private real estate company with nuclear weapons... that is fear.

Ivanka Trump Statement on Child Separation: Annotated Statement

In case you were wondering, being completely tone-deaf is apparently hereditary.  Ivanka Trump would do well to engage in some serious self-reflection on her supposed values.  Below is her tweet celebrating her father's brave "reversal" of a human rights and child abuse travesty he created.  In the interest of context and truth, my annotations are inserted, but the text of the tweet is copy / pasted from her original text.

Thank you @POTUS for taking critical action ending family separation at our border. 

It's action he could have taken more than a month ago or, better yet, he could have not destroyed these families in the first place.  In fact, he has been saying for weeks that he couldn't end this by executive order because it was a "Democrat policy."

Congress must now act

I see you're complicit in the use of these families as legislative hostages too.  Congress has been trying to act.  They've given your dad multiple immigration compromise bills with conditions he previously said he could agree to only for him to change his mind because he didn't get enough money for his pointless wall.  This is the same predatory behavior used by hostage takers and domestic abusers all over the world.  It is disgusting.

+ find a lasting solution that is consistent with our shared values;

Based upon your "charity" work, your lack of statement on this issue before now and the way you flaunted your ability to hug your child during this travesty that is just one of many your dad has helped visit upon the innocent, I'm guessing that we don't share as many values with you as you think.  These kids were abused by the mere act of taking them away and isolating them from their parents.  When these traumatized innocents were screaming in fear, because of your dad a well meaning caregiver could not even give them a hug.  Where the hell was your advocacy for women and families during this?  How dare you spread your sanctimonious filth after the fact (not that anybody who pays attention actually believes this is over).

You want a long lasting solution consistent with our values?  Convince your dad to fire his entire administration and then resign.  That would be half of the battle for America right there.

the same values that so many come here seeking as they endeavor to create a better life for their families

The only "American values" your father and the administration you work for care about is making as much money as possible at whatever cost necessary, even if that cost is only felt by others.  He has implemented a policy that is a violation of people's human rights.  He gets no credit for supposedly ending a travesty he created deliberately.

And you, Ivanka Trump, get no credit for sitting quietly by while your father / boss did this to children that you supposedly care about.

Donald Trump Returns from Singapore: Annotated Statement

This week was the perfect encapsulation of the Trump Administration.  We have corruption, false claims, exaggerations, self-gratification, and further attacks on democracy and the rule of law.  It was a normal week.  That representative week is wonderfully distilled in a twitter statement made by Donald Trump (across two tweets).  I have reproduced that statement below; however, in the interest of safeguarding the truth (something typically absent from Trump statements), I have annotated the statement as best I can.

“Now that I am back from Singapore, where we had a great result with respect to North Korea,”

You achieved nothing. You got an empty promise that is less substantive than the similar promises made multiple times in the past. You got a photo op and a chance to pat yourself on the back for a non-achievement.

“the thought process must sadly go back to the Witch Hunt,”

For those of us that care about the preservation of our democracy and the rule of law, we never stop being worried about the serious matter you falsely call a “witch hunt.” Repeating it over and over doesn’t make it true.

“always remembering that there was No Collusion and No Obstruction of the fabricated No Crime.”

It’s not a memory if it’s a load of garbage.

“So, the Democrats make up a phony crime, Collusion with the Russians,”

If you don’t understand that “collusion” is a civilian shorthand and not a formal legal accusation by now, you are willfully ignorant or incredibly stupid. The issue is the crime that may have been committed during the course of whatever collusion occurred.

“pay a fortune to make the crime sound real,”

Nobody’s actually floating “collusion” as a crime, but the criminal acts associated with collusion don’t need money to sound real. They just need your son’s emails.

“illegally leak (Comey) classified information”

Comey is not a Democrat. I’m fairly certain the information he “leaked” was not classified, though some of it may have been confidential within the Justice Department. You are not exactly one to be casting stones about disclosure of classified information.

“so that a Special Councel [sic] will be appointed,”

As Special Counsel was appointed because you fired someone in charge of an investigation that had to do with you and then shredded your own pretext when you admitted you were thinking about Russia when you fired him and then bragged to the Russians that the was a “nut job” and that the “pressure” was off because you fired him.

“and then Collude to make this pile of garbage take on life in Fake News!”

It’s not collusion for journalists to follow the facts, many of which are derived from you own associates. It’s not their fault that the ridiculous behavior that you and your campaign engaged in are so outrageous that people want to know. Anybody who cares about the integrity of democracy SHOULD care.

Net Neutrality: An Emergency, Whether You Understand It or Not

It sounds like a dystopian fiction version of the future, but it is closer than most of us would care to realize…

Imagine if your power company could decide that they would only provide power for a certain brand of appliances and that they could make that decision because a particular appliance company paid them for it.  Your choice would be to go without those appliances or buy the brand you have been effectively directed to buy.  In the United States, shopping for a new power company is not even an option.

Now, imagine your government has the right to decide that one delivery company did not have to obey the speed limits while all others would be required to adhere to a 20 m.p.h. speed limit at all times.  Neither you nor those other companies can decide to use different roads.  You are stuck with the slower delivery service of the company of your choosing, or you can pick the one that does not have to follow the same rules as everybody else.  Again, they have probably paid for that ability.

If this seems like  an extreme, crazy, unrealistic, alarmist exaggeration of a future where citizens and consumers are deprived of the basic economic choices that we currently make every day, then you are wrong.  While my analogies are not perfect, the future on our doorstep is actually much more terrifying. 

Ajit Pai, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and human embodiment of “regulatory capture,” is proposing the end of rules guaranteeing what is called “Net Neutrality.”  Setting aside for the moment all of the disingenuous and downright dishonest gamesmanship that Pai’s FCC has engaged in over the public commenting on Net Neutrality and the supposed DDoS attacks by proponents of Net Neutrality against the commenting process, Pai’s proposal seems poised to have significant and detrimental effects on American consumers and the American democracy.

Pai is proposing allowing internet service providers (ISPs) to prioritize web traffic as they see fit.  That means they would be able to slow down data to and from particular websites or web services to the point where your ISP could essentially dictate your internet usage.  That means they could decide:  where you shop, what you buy, what video(s) you watch, where you watch it, who you talk to, what games you play, how you play them, on what platform you play them, where you get your news, where you look for jobs, and what devices you use to access the internet.

But wait! There is more.

Because of the increasing consolidation of communications and related industries, there is a good chance that your ISP is also the provider of your cable or satellite TV package.  There would be nothing to stop, for example AT&T (providers of UVerse and Direct TV) of making it basically impossible for cord-cutters to access Netflix or Hulu.  Same is true for Comcast, owners of NBC, and for Verizon, who provide TV through their FIOS service.  In other words, these companies will be able to use their de facto monopolies to make it impossible for competition to exist.

The this anti-competition problem extends beyond the communication and entertainment industries though.  Many small businesses and start up companies rely on their internet presence for survival.  These types of businesses stand no chance in an economy where larger competitors can pay to cripple their web traffic and cut them off at the knees before they get started.

The only people who benefit from the eradication of Net Neutrality are the ISPs.  We are forced to rely select ISPs for nearly all aspects of our daily lives.  In terms of its importance in modern America, it is on the same level as power, water, and roads.  Without Net Neutrality, the internet essentially becomes the private property of those ISPs, private property that they can sell off, rent out, evict people or entities from, and censor at will.  Ajit Pai wants YOUR access to information to be determined by the highest bidder, be it a company looking to sell you something or an interest or political action group looking to influence politics. 

The level of greed that Pai wants to empower is dangerous to the fundamental stability of American democracy and the American free press, two things already increasingly under attack.  There are no Republicans or Democrats on this issue.  Whether you get your news from Occupy Democrats, InfoWars, MSNBC, Fox News or The Onion, you need to care about this.  This is an America issue.  No american should stand for this.  No american should be quiet about this.  Every american should be scared and angry as hell about this.  Most importantly, no american should be idle about this.

Call your representatives and senators.  Call the FCC.  Call your newspaper.  Talk to anybody who will listen.  Educate yourself.  Find a way to help fight.

Joe Arpaio: Disgrace, Racist, Criminal

I have been looking for things to say about the pardon of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio from his federal conviction for criminal contempt of court.  I want to rail about how disgusting his actions were, how antagonistic not only the decision to pardon him was but the timing of it as well.

I cannot imagine how marginalized his victims feel seeing their tormentor pardoned without a penalty.  The high of seeing the man who seemed bulletproof for so long finally be held accountable only to have that accountability swept away like it was nothing must be devastating.  I know that, but I do not feel it like his victims do.

Many others have done a fine job of detailing the deplorable behavior and criminal acts by this supposed agent of the law.  I cannot add to the conversation there, but I cannot stay silent.

Arpaio, between his conviction and pardon, attempted to scare his racist and / or ignorant audience by telling them that if the big bad government can come after an innocent law man doing his job (paraphrasing his words), then they can come after “anybody.” My response to his contention is this: You’re damned right, and that is as it should be!

Anybody who systematically violates the rights of citizens and doze so largely on the basis of race and in the name of electoral politics should absolutely expect the government to respond with righteous justice and accountability.  Nobody should expect that they will be able to hide and cower behind a badge or behind the oversized tie of an unqualified and equally cynical (and / or racist) executive trying to distract from his own self-inflicted political wounds and controversies.

Lee v. Washington (v. Lee)

One of the recent arguments in defense of the preservation of Confederate war monuments is the laughable claim that there is no difference between Robert E. Lee and George Washington.  One of the people doing this is Donald Trump’s lawyer, who has taken time away from defending his client against unrelated allegations to make this argument.  It is an act that is indicative of the fact that Donald Trump is not merely accidentally defending white nationalism, and also the lengths to which Trump and his team will go to distract from his Russian problem.

But why is the comparison so pathetically misguided?  The argument amounts to saying that both men were slave owners who led rebellions against their former nations of allegiance.  This is true so far as it goes, but its omissions render it disingenuous at best.

First, Washington is and was not a traitor to this nation.  He did not betray the United States.  He helped found it.  Britain can rightfully consider him a traitor to them, but he is no traitor to the United States of America.  Additionally, he remains the only sitting president to lead the army into battle when he led troops to put down the Whiskey Rebellion.

Lee did betray the United States.  He led an armed rebellion against the United States.  Even if the Union had lost, Lee would still have been a traitor to the United States even as he would have been a Confederate Washington.  So, this isn’t merely a case of history being written by the victors.

Second, while the causes for the American Revolution and the American Civil War are complicated, their motivations are less so.  The American Revolution was largely motivated by the colonies / states not being represented in the government that presided over them.  This was an active and ongoing problem that resulted in acts, taxes and legislation aimed at enriching the British Empire at the expense of the colonies that drove it.

On the other hand, the American Civil War was motivated by the desire to protect the rights of white men to own black men.  This is the “state’s right” that the war was fought over.  The war was started because southern traitors did not like the result of a presidential election, even though the racist ⅗ compromise gave them a disproportionate vote, and even though the winner of the election indicated he did not intend to end the barbaric practice of slavery.  This means that their issue was almost entirely speculative.

They revolted because a system that was rigged in their favor was not rigged enough in their favor and did not play out exactly as they wanted.  This revolt of spoiled racists and sore losers is the rebellion that Robert E. Lee led.

Washington led a revolt of people not represented in their government.  He did not lead a rebellion of people already overrepresented in their government and were just mad because they did not get their way.

By all means, remember Gen. Lee. Remember all the men and women who fought and died for the Confederacy.  Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but we cannot learn from something that we do not remember.  There is a difference between remembering and idealizing though, and these monuments and memorials idealize people who were traitors to the United States in the name of white supremacy.  I sincerely doubt that many of these monuments, if any, provide any meaningful context for the events and people they memorialize.  Those interested in commemorating the Confederacy during Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement, when a large number of these memorials were put up, were more interested in holding back the tide of racial equality.

We must learn from our remembrance and study of the American Civil War and the people who fought on both sides, and that is not what these memorials are for.  I am not aware of any memorials portray Confederate leaders as well-meaning, but flawed and tragic figures simply on the wrong side of justice and history.  While I personally find most of the leadership of the Confederacy to be motivated by more sinister intent than that, it is at least an acceptable view in that it acknowledges that they were absolutely wrong, regardless of intent.

Tempting as it may be to take the view, “Washington, good; Lee, bad,” things are rarely that simple.  I was looking for the best way to illustrate that point when I learned this week that the opposition to Confederate war memorials had a very early and surprising member: Robert E. Lee.

When approached about monuments to the Confederate war effort, Lee wrote on at least two occasions that such symbols would hold the South back and would “keep open the sores of war.”  He thought it “wiser” to “obliterate the symbols of civil strife.”

So, there we have it.  Even the man who led the military rebellion against the United States recognized that monuments to his own efforts, the efforts he risked his life and the lives of his brothers in arms, were harmful to the United States and to the South specifically.  It’s unfortunate that the people who want to defend the veneration of Gen. Lee and his fellow Confederate traitors cannot actually learn the hard lessons he specifically wanted us to learn.