Category: Politics

So with September out the back door, it’s now only October between us and the important Nov 6. midterm elections here in the United States.

I see Beto O’Rourke (Democrat) had country music icon Willie Nelson (85) perform at one of his campaign rallies.  This is in deep-red Texas, to beat out sitting Senator Ted Cruz.  Nelson sang a ditty called Vote ‘Em Out.

Hopefully, scores of more young people have realized these last two years that they have to exercise their power at the ballot box.  In 2016, Hillary Clinton got 65 million votes and Donald Trump 62 million.  Another 100 million eligible voters in the country did not vote. Oy.

There were fireworks and high drama at the Kavanaugh hearings today.

From the NYT Editorial Board: What a study in contrasts: Where Christine Blasey Ford was calm and dignified, Brett Kavanaugh was volatile and belligerent; where she was eager to respond fully to every questioner, and kept worrying whether she was being “helpful” enough, he was openly contemptuous of several senators; most important, where she was credible and unshakable at every point in her testimony, he was at some points evasive, and some of his answers strained credulity.

What I believe: Judge Kavanagh drank beer like a fish in high school & college, to the point that he blacked out.  Who knows how many times. Of course: he denied it; refused today to say how many beers are ‘too many’. He possibly assaulted Christine Blasey Ford, and forgot about it, or he now chooses to have forgotten about it.  He refuses to agree that the FBI (it’s standard procedure) should look into Ford’s claims. Ford is only one of three women accusing him of misconduct, and all want the FBI to investigate.  It does not add up for Kavanaugh.

Update Fri 9/28: There is going to be an FBI investigation into Ford’s claims, after all. They would have to work quickly: they only have one week.

*Himpathy: the inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy that powerful men often enjoy in cases of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, homicide and other misogynistic behavior. Kate Manne uses the word in an opinion piece in the NYT.

Thursday morning, all eyes will be on the hearing of Dr Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony and (Supreme Court nominee) Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony, before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington DC.

I had not yet settled in the USA in 1991, but I knew about the testimony of Anita Hill in the hearings for then-nominee for Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas. Well, it’s happening again.  Christine Blasey Ford is accusing Trump’s nominee for Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, of sexually assaulting her as a teenager.

There is a difference, though: this time around the President of the United States is a known harasser (or worse) of women .. and since late 2017, the #MeToo movement has forced many powerful men to face up to the consequences of their abuse of women.

So we’ll see what happens. There may – or may not – be hearings next week. Like most Democrats I am an Absolutely Not-No Way-No How ‘NO‘ on Kavanaugh*- but I don’t get to vote on it.

*He’s been caught lying to the Senate, even before all of the latest allegations, and he’s a hard-line conservative. He also is of the opinion that a sitting President cannot be subpoenaed, nor indicted. No wonder Trump wants him to join the Supreme Court.

It’s really too much to keep track of, all the crimes and guilty pleas of Trump’s associates, but this is a big one.

Today, Paul Manafort (Trump’s 2016 campaign manager), already found guilty of tax evasion and money laundering, plead guilty to additional charges of ‘conspiracy against the United States’ and ‘conspiracy to obstruct justice (witness tampering)’.
And: Manafort will cooperate with Special Counsel Mueller’s investigators.

Manafort was present at the June 2016 meeting with the Russians (with Donald Trump Jr and Son-in-law Jared Kushner also in attendance). He knows if Trump Senior knew about the meeting. 

What will Trump do, now that even more chickens have come home to roost*?
It really does not look like his nightmare of a presidency will make it to 2020.

*An expression that is 500 years old. The older fuller form was ‘curses are like young chickens; they always come home to roost’. Your offensive words or actions are likely at some point to rebound and hurt you.

Some say the constitutional crisis for the United States has been here for awhile, already. (Cannot get rid of a manifestly unfit-for-office President, because his party protects him). Others say it is still in the making.

But something must be seriously, seriously screwed up when senior administration officials write alarming, anonymous op-eds in the New York Times.

And when, almost every week, a book comes out that describe utter dysfunction & mayhem in the White House.  The latest book is by none other than investigative journalist Bob Woodward, famous for his work on Watergate, and with The Washington Post since 1971. There is no denying his reporting.

Australia has had a turbulent week in politics, one that saw prime minister Malcolm Turnbull ousted on Friday. Scott Morrison was voted in by parliament as the country’s 30th prime minister.

Morrison’s political views are socially conservative (he abstained from the vote for legalizing same-sex marriage earlier this year). I read in Wikipedia that Morrison is from the Liberal Party of Australia, ‘a major centre-right liberal conservative political party in Australia’  .. a description which I find confusing!  Anyway: the centre-left party in Australian politics, is the Australian Labor Party (ALP).

Legendary US Senator John McCain (81) passed away on Saturday after a long battle with brain cancer.  I did not agree with the man’s politics*, but he was a survivor, for sure. Even before he was shot down in Vietnam as a Navy pilot, there was the 1967 USS Forrestal aircraft carrier fire disaster.  And in his political career, he survived the Keating Five corruption scandal in 1989.

*There was that famous midnight thumbs-down for the ‘Skinny Repeal’ of Obamacare. But the reason McCain gave, was that it was not done by ‘regular order’. Or it could have been motivated purely by revenge against Trump, for disparaging him as a war hero.

There are many more revealing details about his life in this article that Tim Dickinson wrote for Rolling Stone in 2008 when McCain ran against Obama.

Whoah. There is now irrefutable evidence that Trump conspired to influence (read: steal) the election in November 2016. (And this does not even involve the Russians or the June 2016 Trump tower meeting).

Per sworn testimony in court today: Trump instructed his ‘fixer’ personal lawyer Michael Cohen to pay hush-money to two women in October of 2016, so that they would not reveal their sexual relationships with him. This was in the wake of the tape with the infamous Billy Bush ‘locker-room’ banter. Then Trump lied about it on Air Force One, saying that he doesn’t know anything about it. (Sidenote: Trump lies to everyone, and his supporters lie to themselves).

Meanwhile, over in Virginia, the jury found Paul Manafort guilty on 8 of 18 charges today.  There are now five close Trump associates that have plead guilty or have been found guilty. (‘I hire the best people’). They are National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, Campaign Aide George Papadopoulos, Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, Deputy Campaign Chairman Rick Gates, and Personal Lawyer Cohen.

What should happen next, is that the Republican-controlled House and the Senate hold hearings, and then start impeachment proceedings.
I’m not holding my breath, though.

.. in the Manafort* case. They have been deliberating for two days, and will resume on Monday. Court-watchers say that if the deliberations drag on into Wednesday, there would be cause for concern.

*Paul Manafort (69), Trump’s ex-campaign manager.  The jury is deciding his guilt or innocence on 18 tax and bank fraud charges, related to his consulting work for pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine.

The evidence presented against Manafort is very strong. His defence lawyers really did not have much to work with. So why did Manafort not make a plea deal with Special Investigator Robert Mueller? is the question. He very well might spend the rest of his life in jail.

President Trump could offer him a pardon (which would be pretty outrageous, to be sure).
Asked about it, Trump said ‘I don’t talk about that. I think it’s very sad what they’ve done to Paul Manafort’.

Trump’s ex-senior advisor Omarosa*  must have struck a nerve, the way he viciously lashed out at her, in a tweet this morning. Who talks like this? Is this the way a President should talk? asked journalists of Press Secretary Huckabee-Sanders. Her answer was basically that Trump is an equal-opportunity insulter.

*Her full name is Omarose Manigault-Newman. She became famous on Trump’s Apprentice reality TV show. She was fired from the White House in December 2017.  It turned out she has a recording of the firing, done by Chief of Staff John Kelly in the Situation Room. She says she has other recorded conversations, as well. She has also just published a book called ‘Unhinged’ .. a reference to Trump, of course.

So .. 90 days now, until the 2018 midterm elections. Political pundits point to all kinds of special elections the past 18 months, as evidence that a lot of Republicans will be run out of office (enough to make the Democrats the majority in the House of Representatives). In many cases where Republicans had a 10 or 15% advantage before Trump’s election, that is now all gone. In places that used to be a toss-up – well, those will go blue (Democratic).

Time is running out for Special Investigator Mueller to make some radical moves ahead of the election. If he had not issued a report or more indictments by Labor Day (Sept. 3), he will have to wait until the election is over (Nov. 6).

In the meantime, the Trump Administration scandals never stop. Today: early Trump 2016 endorser, New York Republican Congressman Chris Collins.  He was indicted for brazen insider trading crimes. (Got confidential news of a failed drug trial, developed by a company he had shares in, and was a board member of*. Frantically dialed up his family and told them to sell their shares).

*Just an aside: why are members of Congress allowed to sit on boards of publicly traded companies?

(The plot thickens). Just tonight, it was reported by CNN and NBC that President ‘No Collusion’ Trump knew ahead of time (and presumably approved) the meeting that Don Trump Jr had had with the Russians, in June 2016 in Trump Tower. This was the infamous meeting to get ‘dirt’ from Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. The meeting first became public knowledge in the spring of 2017.  Trump Sr repeatedly denied he knew about the meeting beforehand. Don Jr told Congress under oath, that his dad did not know.

Did Presidential Candidate Trump know that the Russians had hacked Clinton’s e-mail? Or tried to hack it, or planned to hack it? – and secretly sent his son to meet with them?  If so – boom! that would surely be conspiring with the Russians against the United States,  as well as seal the case for obstruction of justice.

First of all, Trump should have canceled the meeting with Putin (after the FBI’s indictment on Friday, of 12 Russian agents, for hacking the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee’s computers).  That was too much to hope for, of course. So there he was: perfectly happy to stand next to Putin – the former KGB agent and a lying thug – and take his side, and throw the United States under the bus. (Tweeted this morning: Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!).

It really is hard to wrap one’s mind around: a President of the United States that grovels to Vladimir Putin.

‘The ego has landed’ says Friday’s Daily Mirror of Trump’s visit to the UK (and the Trump baby blimp is ready for take-off).

Can the visit from the United States President-That-Is-A-Traveling-International-Embarrassment, be anything more than an exercise in damage control? (No). Trump’s visit coincides with turmoil in the UK around the proposed details of Brexit .. which (of course?) Trump criticized. President Stable Genius always knows best.

(I added the question mark just before posting. I should have left it as a statement of fact). Former First Lady Laura Bush in a Washington Post op-ed: images of children being detained in a converted Walmart and a tent city are ‘eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history’. (Note: It took decades for the United States government to admit that policy was wrong).

Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had the gall today to play dumb & deny that separation of young kids from their parents amounts to a form of child abuse.

Tue 6/19: And on Tuesday, Nielsen was seen in the back of a Mexican restaurant in Washington D.C. She and her security detail had to leave 10 minutes later, amid shouts of Shame! and End family separation!

*’Lock her up!’ (Hillary Clinton) was a favorite chant of the Trump supporters in 2016.

Trump campaign manager Manafort had his bail revoked today and is now in jail.

No sooner had that happened, when Trump appeared on the White House lawn.  Hey! and just by coincidence, there was his propaganda network Fox News, at the ready for an interview.  Manafort ‘had worked for me for a very short time’. On and on Trump babbled, spouting nonsense and lies, like only he can.

Manafort is in serious, serious, legal trouble (read: decades of jail time, for his well-documented crimes of conspiracy and money laundering). Trump cannot pardon him for state crimes (only federal ones). I cannot see how Manafort can continue to refuse to cooperate with the Russia investigation. It’s possible that he has nothing substantial to offer (as a witness against Trump). If that’s the case, his goose is cooked.

It’s Friday, and Trump is out of the country .. yay!
Our President-That-Alienates-Our-Allies suggested out of the blue, on the way to the G7 meeting, that Russia should be allowed back into the G7. (Haha. I think they will decline). Relations are so frayed, that the G7 may actually become the G6 – by throwing the United States out. (Hopefully not). Does Trump’s staff even tell him that? Does he even know that Russia was kicked out of the G8 in 2014 because Putin invaded Ukraine (and his army shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17)?

P.S. The indictments are piling up for Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. An additional indictment today lumps Manafort and suspected Russian intelligence operative Konstantin Kilimnik together, charging them both with obstruction of justice. (Manafort made numerous phone calls to Kilimnik while out on bail, while already indicted for a long list of serious crimes). Manafort needs to take his toothbrush with when he goes to court next Friday. Word is that his bail is going to be revoked – that he is going to sit in jail to await the start of his trial in July.  

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Update Sat Jun 9: At the conference ..