The Protests: Where Do We Go from Here?

On May 25, 2020, a man named George Floyd died of asphyxiation while being sat upon by a Minneapolis police officer. (*) The death of Floyd was video taped and as the horrific images washed around the internet, public outrage bubbled over into a series of protests first in Minneapolis (where the officer's precinct was burned to the ground, along with an unfinished housing project) and then around the country and even around the world.

The protests in some cases have been perfectly peaceful, in other cases there has been violence, confrontation and looting. I thought many of the cops were particularly aggressive exacerbating the confrontations but video images are never as complete as you'd like to think, so I won't go too far down that alley except to suggest that the images of looting and destruction aren't perhaps as obvious as they first appear either. At any rate, whatever your political persuasion, there is plenty of video evidence of....whatever you wanna see.

People say 'this time is different' but I'm old enough now to have heard that phrase a million trillion times and I gotta say, most of this doesn't look all that different to me. What happened to George Floyd happens routinely in America (and everywhere else, for what it's worth) and the reaction to his death does, too. This is hardly the first batch of protests I've seen and generally they fizzle out because people never really understood what they were protesting to begin with. Crowds are motivated by large abstract causes often times based around a single event or image or concept, but as time wears on the abstractions and the imagery fall away from each other and no one can quite articulate what they ever felt. As the paradigms get tangled, the problems and the solutions overlap in a way that isn't clear and could even become unproductive, reinforcing the tangle rather than loosening it.

The wrinkle in this current situation is Covid-19. Ironically the thing we obsessed over for three months and then discarded without a second thought is the real agent of change coming in the form of economic dislocations which haven't taken shape yet. The changes are coming--and don't be fooled by the recent market rally, that is not a sign of recovery but a sign of 'irrational exuberance'. We won't really get the full effect until the fall and then probably into next spring. The fact that this is an election year makes the turmoil even more confusing and the outcome even harder to see coming. (**)

I'm relatively optimistic. There's still enough time before the election that the energy could dissipate, but I suspect...well....this time is different. (Oh shit, I kinda walked right into that) The idea that protests in the street or even real widespread reform are going to end racism....well, no, that's not a function of marches in the street. But it could lead to reforming police departments across the country which would be a great outcome. Would it end violence against black citizens? No...uh....no. Racism and police departments are not synonymous, one does not imply the other, reforming one does not necessarily reform the other. So while race in this paradigm is, I think, a canard, it could still be a useful one.

The difference this time is I'm hearing the correct rhetoric--which ironically almost never happens!--and the energy underneath all of this seems genuine enough that perhaps this could lead to worthwhile change. A few things in the air I'd love to see happen:

1) Outlaw police unions. Absolutely! They should never have been allowed to exist to begin with! The only purpose unions serve is to shield the bad apples--the good apples don't need unions. (***).

2) Outlaw no-knock raids. If any police force ever does anything like this they better be prepared to walk into court with a wealth of irrefutable evidence that violence or danger to the public was imminent. And they better bring all their body camera footage. (The FBI could still use this technique and while I don't trust the FBI to be perfect and I do trust them to get the fucking address correct!)

3) Reform qualified immunity. This one is a little tougher to pull off because the State has to maintain a monopoly of force, thus its agents can't be truly independent--indeed, you don't want them to be, you want the State to control them and take the blame when they fuck up. Okay. But their agents (re: cops) can still be held to judicial standard in keeping with the sensitivity of their positions. I heard one suggestion that cops should be forced to own malpractice insurance like doctors: I don't think this is realistic to the position of law enforcers as it would give the cops the right to not do their jobs ('Oh, I don't like that neighborhood, I don't care if dispatch wants me to go, I'll pass'). The cops are cops, they're not normal citizens. Making them truly independent is not in keeping with what a police force is: it is a representation of the State, backed by the State, and controlled by the State. Losing that would lose all shape to what police protection actually is.

4) End asset forfeiture. I'm thinking mostly of War on Drugs type bull shit here. Seizing the assets of people accused--not convicted, ACCUSED!--is pure theft (or as Libertarians call it: taxation without representation). Armed goons from the State taking your stuff should never have been the norm.

5) Body cameras. This is a bit of double-edged sword in that if a cop shows video footage of you committing a crime in court, well, you're done, pal. The public defender ain't gonna help you out. And, again, video footage is not always the easiest to interpret. But the cops need to understand that body cameras protect them! Cops need to see body cameras as a means of establishing their credibility and warding off liability. The Cops need to be constantly proving that they are correctly administering their duties and cameras (and other monitoring systems) are the way to do it.

6) More civilian oversight boards. Okay, protesters, this one's on you: you've shown that you're capable every few years of marching in the streets to demand someone else solve your problems, are you ready to show up every Monday morning for a volunteer job of mediating between cops and criminals? Time to put your money where your mouth is and actually get your hands dirty doing the civic work. And, that's right, for little or no money. Do you love your community enough to do this? Because no one else is going to do it--this is not something you slough off on a gov't agency. Civilian oversight is the heart of any worthwhile change we're going to see. (****)

7) How about civilian parole boards that work like jury duty? I imagine a system where each potential parolee has an advocate to make the positive case and an advocate to make the negative case and a civilian panel to 'yea' or 'nay' every one up for parole. This already happens somewhat but the process could cast a wider net and lure more civilians in, which would deepen our understanding of who the real dangerous criminals are and who is ready for another chance at freedom. Again, if the civilians want control, they have to step up and be responsible for these things--and until they do they are at the mercy of politicians and their mouthpieces characterizing the agenda.

8) Keep going on prison reform. It seems to me we should be giving prisoners every opportunity to get out of jail. And, well, really what I'm suggesting here is further punishing the ones that neglect these opportunities. I'm not in favor of getting rid of prisons, I wholeheartedly believe that there are human beings that are too violent to be around other people. But my gut is that prisons contain vastly more than just those violent offenders and that the rest are in danger of becoming worse rather than better. Some sort of testing or something could be used to separate the un-reformable people from those that truly want to return to the outside world.

9) More home incarceration and monitoring. I suspect this is the way of the future regardless of the current unrest because this is purely a function of technology. It will be cheaper and easier for everyone involved if most criminals are confined to their homes and monitored remotely (this still would not apply to violent offenders, but most everyone else doesn't really need to go to prison). The downside of this is that judges could become trigger happy if they feel like there's no cost to incarcerating people, they may toss out sentences like candy and we could end up with a massive amount of citizens basically in quarantine and with a long record of petty bullshit. 

10) I'm down with de-funding various police departments. It should be noted here that 'de-funding' doesn't mean getting rid of police departments, rather it means reforming or reconstituting them, which in some locations is probably long over due. But in other locations that may not be useful at all. All this policing stuff is extremely local, so thinking of this as a blanket reform is probably not realistic. Also this is probably the kind of concept that won't find much purchase at first but may continue to percolate for the next few decades, this could become a slow motion reform movement where some communities see it as a salvation and others see it as unnecessary.  

11) I don't really know how to go about reforming this but I think the problem in the courts over the last 40-50 years is plea bargaining. First time offenders are expected to plead guilty and take the punishment rather than arguing their case on its merits. The effect of this over time is devastating: our judicial system is built on precedents and if the precedent is the accused is supposed to accept guilt without a proper defense then no one is doing their jobs. Prosecutors, defenders, judges and juries become agents of paperwork instead of actually building a judicial infrastructure--which is the whole point of that third branch of gov't. This is incredibly slanted against the poor--blacks, especially--who basically abrogate their own defense because that's what they're told to do rather than fighting for justice. This is why we have overcrowded prisons and this is why way too many people are getting serious time (or other ramifications) for mostly petty nonsense that the system shouldn't even worry about. (*****)

12) More cops with less guns. The pandemic had the glimmers of where local police departments should allow themselves to go: more community involvement with the elderly, the infirm, and others that are at the margins of society. Police departments should seek to be proactive in reaching into their communities in a way above and beyond simply apprehending criminals. Local police could be at the vanguard of coordinating civic participation in a way that is not directed at 'bad apple' police officers and doesn't require any guns. When you get into a car accident and you need an officer of the law to fill out the proper legal paperwork, you don't need that guy to have a gun on his hip--how does that help anything? The fact that the police feel the need to show off their deadly force as a means of earning the respect of the community is precisely what the community fucking hates about them! Yes, when guns are the only answer for enforcing the law, that needs to come from agents of the State. But until that force is required, that force needn't be on display.

People suggest that changing the composition of city and police department leadership is crucial and in certain cases I suppose that's true. But that's a largely political observation that I don't have much knowledge of since each police district is going to be distinct. Having more black mayors, for example, is fine with me but I seriously doubt that will change much on its own and since the necessity for these changes is entirely local, just voting for (fill in the stupid partisan bullshit you believe in) across the nation doesn't strike me as of any use at all. I'm fine with change but those changes are local, will be local and must be determined locally, so suggesting that this is necessary everywhere--and will be effective everywhere--is just empty rhetoric.

In a contemporary political sense, I would suggest ending the protests immediately but keeping the peaceful marches going periodically right up to election day. The key is to keep the spirit of the George Floyd protests alive while keeping the chaos to a minimum without being overtly political. When you insert politics you also insert the equal and opposite politics, and now you've got a soup of nonsense rather than a coherent message. The politics will handle itself and if the protests lose their shape, then that's when it becomes a detriment rather than a boon to one's political wants and needs. And I think seeing celebrities and other public intellectual types keeping that fervor alive is better than politicians positioning themselves in relation to it.

As for the election in November, well, I don't see it as nearly as important as most commentators simply because these are city/county/state issues more than national ones. Blaming/crediting the president (or the president wannbe) is just missing the point that the White House doesn't really have much contact with local police forces. But whoever you're voting for, keeping these protests going is probably necessary. 

(*) On March 13, 2020 (the day the Covid-19 lock down began if memory serves), Breonna Taylor was shot in her bed by Louisville police officers during the course of a no-knock raid seeking a drug dealer; police subsequently admitted they had the wrong address. To my mind this is an even more egregious offense but as there is no video evidence (*ahem* that we know of) this hasn't had quite the same impact on the recent protests.

(**) I think it's a bit weird that the Flu Pandemic of 1919 killed huge numbers of people worldwide and affected huge numbers more...and is virtually invisible in the literature of the time. Movies don't mention it, the theater and music of the time don't dwell on it, nor does the poetry or the politics. Just because it's effect is massive does not mean history will properly record it or culture will hold on to it. Indeed, how will the current pandemic appear in the next decade's worth of books, movies and music?

(***) Ditto with teachers unions, they should be next on the chopping block. Let me repeat: the only purpose unions serve is to shield the bad apples. Or didn't you realize that schools are every bit as racist, self-serving, and ineffective as the police?

(****) Combine this with a 25-30 hour work week and...are you getting more interested? With more and more people working from home cutting down on travel time...this sweetening the deal for you? More gig economy jobs where you set your own hours...ready to give more of that extra time to your community? This is where the nature of work is going which will leave a lot more time for volunteering and other civic participation--and I don't mean marching the streets! I mean actually doing stuff.

(*****) The recent obsession with the 13th amendment, for example, is totally lost on me. The prisons are not the meaningful part of the justice process, they are the last stop of it. That's not the problem--the problem is the first day in court. If you bungle that, you're in trouble. Most of the 13th amendment reexamination seemingly revolves around private (or for-profit) prisons, but again, that isn't the problem at all--and focusing on that is a really unfortunate waste of time. I don't pretend to know how private prisons work but it seems to me that gov't has monopsony power meaning the prison company has no market power whatsoever in the relationship (except the gov'ts naturally move very slow and are at the mercy of sudden changes). The relative ownership of the facility is irrelevant. If the gov't actually ran its own prisons does that somehow guarantee better treatment? That was never true in the past, don't know why it would be in the future. If the prison company was a joint stock company and all the stock was owned by black people, would that make a difference in the life of black prisoners? No, not necessarily. Was life better for black people in America before the advent of private prisons? No. You don't end up in prison because prisons exist, you end up in prison because your lawyer didn't get the job done. And plea bargaining is another way of saying your lawyer didn't get it done. You need to fight the battle in the court, fighting it in the prison is too late. (Incidentally as an side to this footnote: I'm not opposed to prisoners being allowed to work inside of prison if they are fairly compensated, but they should not be forced to work; I believe each citizen's surplus value is their god-given possession until they die, something the gov't should nurture rather than capture)

Covid-19 (the politics)

I get my news through a steady diet email newsletters from a variety of industries, sources, and political persuasions. I stay in touch with developments while keeping hype to a minimum and the wide variety of viewpoints keeps me from getting too paranoid in any particular direction. I don't get on Twitter (though I'm pondering a way to craft a useful Twitter life) and I'm too boring a person for Facebook or Instagram. I look at Reddit throughout the day and that's where my political-ness comes from. During this period of quarantine I have seen no diminution in the sheer amount of political stories (er, that is, teenagers being snarky for on-line plaudits, not even because they believe their own snark) and I guess I'm not surprised: politics is a popular parlor game among the sophisticated but bored populace.

But the gov't has never been less crucial to me than this week. I've seen enough of Trump that I don't understand why anybody bothers to watch him.  What could a normal citizen possibly learn from watching this guy? He clearly doesn't get how the virus works--and why would he? Why would it matter if he did? Are you waiting for the president to cure a coronavirus? He doesn't do stuff like that, so why exactly does the population even need him to pretend like he does? Indeed, this is a States' problem more than a Federal one and each State will show different ways to react and recover that will be invaluable going forward while the Federal gov't isn't likely to do much of anything relating to the virus itself that is useful at all.

Even the quarantine didn't derive from the gov't but from the citizenry. The corporations, the banks, the insurance companies, the markets, the masses....we embraced social distancing as a means of fending off this virus and the gov't was forced to come along--even though Trump clearly doesn't like this or want any part of this. The gov't is downright hostile to the plan--so why are we looking to the gov't in this time when it is looking only to us?

It was the NBA that let the cat out of the bag: public interaction is way too much of a liability to afford to have a game. When you have 20,000 people in an arena, it is easy to assume that 2% of those people (400) have the virus and that two hours of sitting crampacked together will surely spread the disease to at least another 2% of anyone with 10 feet of the person (which might be up to 30-40 people); now if anyone dies of this virus--anyone anywhere in the world dies of this--now the NBA is potentially liable to anyone that has ever heard of the NBA. Yes, many of those cases would be frivolous but they would still cost the NBA an enormous amount just to make them go away or many cases would be cheaper for the NBA to pay off rather than litigate, which can be brutally expensive and at least implies a level of culpability, which opens the league to further claims. If the virus progresses as the spreadsheets suggest and the death rates maintain to expected levels, then the NBA becomes financially liable to potentially hundreds of thousands of claims just for a regular old Kings-Nuggets game on a Tuesday night.

Likewise with South-by-Southwest (SXSW): I suspect that at the last minute insurance underwriters came through and said something like, 'yeah, normally we charge a thousand for this but this year it's going to be a million because the rate of spread of this virus is too much to handle.' When liability balloons like that, then calling the whole thing off--cancelling out on the thousands of people and vendors that looked forward to the event every year--is much easier and cheaper than going through with the event.

Well, the logic behind the science that dictates that putting too many people together will spread the virus too quickly, applies to non-basketball games and music festivals, too. Indeed, it applies to anyone and everyone. The NBA showed us that, then the gov't jumped in to look busy.

We think of cold blooded capitalists that just want their money no matter who is injured but when the potential liability of injury is exponential then cancelling the show and foregoing the profits is a wildly cheaper move.

That's where the quarantine came from: insurance companies realizing that, in a legal liability sense, it is too dangerous (potentially too expensive) for people to be around each other. It didn't come from the gov't. The gov't was reacting to what society itself and the markets had already instinctively grasped: that 'flattening the curve' was the only hope to avoid a throttling of our health care infrastructure.

'Flattening the curve' undoubtedly came from insurance companies, not from the gov't. The gov't doesn't have a good eye for gloomy futures, politicians love to keep things rosy no matter how dire the situation truly is. But insurance companies are basically nothing but pessimism machines. And flattening the curve is the only thing that makes sense to them. Again, the gov't is reacting to the markets, not the other way around.

The gov't wasn't completely absent but are the CDC and the Federal Reserve really "gov't"? (Ehh, that's a hobby horse I'll give a ride to some other time) The gov't's initial response came in the form of the CDC sending out tests in early February to track down the spread of the virus within USA's borders. The tests were faulty, thus we lost two weeks of figuring out what was going on. Is that Trump's' fault? No. Hell, I'm not even blaming the CDC--this shit's hard, man! No one knew this virus existed three months ago, putting together a test, mass producing it, implementing it, getting the results back and then analyzing said results is a long process. And it is much easier to do it wrong (as we've seen) than it is to do it right. That's not a function of gov't, that's just how life works. Expecting the gov't to immediately and completely solve all problems (or even diagnose them) is an unrealistic expectation and though it may be fun to barb your political enemies, it does you no service as a citizen or a human being to fill your brain with unrealistic expectations.

The other early gov't action was the Federal Reserve spontaneously lowering interest rates near zero on March 3. That was about week before the virus started spooking Americans but it had already begun to hit the markets. As far back as January I saw choppy waters ahead for the stock market but I figured this was just another one of those viruses we've been getting steadily for the last 20 years (H1N1, swine flu, Mers, bird flu, SARS, West Nile, Zika, Ebola, just to name a few) and that this one would fade like the others, making an impact but ultimately moving on. When the Fed did that rate cut in the middle of the day, that caught me off guard (kinda scared me, truth be told), because that was the first indication that the powers that be knew this was going to be huge. That was the first moment that Covid-19 struck me as a coming onslaught, not merely another one of these influenzas that occasionally spooks us.

The effect of the Fed actions and Congress's subsequent economic overhauls will only become apparent over time. For now, these moves are so large as to be pretty much imaginary. Congress's newly passed $2 trillion bill is really just a giant placeholder for what will eventually be negotiated. Economically speaking it's easy to see where this is going: for now the credit card companies will pay all the bills and the insurance companies will end up with all the liability and they'll have to sit down with the gov't to whack it all out. Until then, I don't really understand why the markets would bother to go up or down: I know cash flow is a concern but in my lifetime I doubt there has ever been less cash flow in the American economy than this week (or the coming weeks) and it feels like getting by on even the shakiest credit is probably gonna work for most people.

I expect the economy to bounce back quickly. Why? Because there has been no physical deterioration of industrial production or of our supply lines. This is not like a war or a hurricane or an earthquake. What this is, economically speaking, is a labor stoppage: the physical infrastructure is just fine except that the workers are not working right now. Once they get back to work, I expect the economy to come back hard and fast. This period will be a gap down in the macro-economy, which is a godawful struggle while its happening but should be a boon to new and future growth once it has been absorbed.

When the workers get back to work, the economy will be strong again--indeed, I don't see why it wouldn't. Not everything will be the same, not everyone will emerge unscathed, it will be a while before things get back to "normal" (yeah, with quotation marks). But the larger economy has suffered only a shock to the system, nothing suggestive of overall material decline, a coma (as Larry Summers suggested). When people do get back to "normal" I think they'll get back to it hard. Workers will suddenly have a new appreciation for work and consumers will have a new appreciation for the products and services they need.

Remember the CDC was the first to act and the Federal Reserve came next (two quasi-gov't institutions, I would add). The gov't is not well-equipped to get ahead of problems: the White House steadily downplayed this as long as they could--and fought being dragged into a quarantine--and Congress only acts when it is absolutely forced to. You can blame the particular personalities in office at the moment or you can recognize that that is simply how gov't works: slowly and only when forced to act. It was SXSW and the NBA and the NCAA that made the fateful decisions that showed the public the light....not the gov't. Long live the people!

It is the citizenry, the markets, the corporations, the PEOPLE that made the move to save lives and they will bring back a new way of life when the time is right. The people have done it and the people will do more. Fuck the gov't, they're a bunch of fucking clowns. In short, Trump was forced into this. I am convinced he never wanted any of this and still doesn't. So crediting Trump or blaming Trump is just a waste of your time. Perhaps pillorying politicians is an amusement to you, in which case, well, Trump is a pretty obvious target. But in my home state of Kentucky we have a governor that's on TV every night and pummeling my inbox with spam every day and he sure wants to look like he's in charge and he is kindly, he is the anti-Trump...and I got no use for him either. What is that dude gonna tell me that's gonna make my life better?

Politicians don't create vaccines and until they do, who gives a fuck what they have to say? They are functionaries, they are fungible commodities, they are not sexy or knowledgeable or important and pretending as if they are (or are supposed to be) is a just a poor use of your conception of gov't. This nation is people, the gov't is just the gov't.

Impeachment (Phase Three)

The Senate, yesterday, voted down both articles of impeachment against President Trump, as pretty much everyone predicted from the start. Trump stands Impeached but not Removed and seems ready to stand for re-election in November.

The process is now completely over and I'm still in the same place I was at the beginning: what was the point of this? What were the House Democrats trying to achieve? I don't get it and I never got it. Two takeaways: the House lost track of the crime committed and Trump's refusal to participate has given future presidents a brand new game plan.

The crime Trump stood accused of was holding up aid to Ukraine as allotted by the Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. The whole business about an investigation of Hunter Biden was the motive for the crime, not the crime itself. The crime was never properly laid out because since the White House chose not to defend itself, the House Dems never bothered to actually follow through on the crime. They brought a steady diet of ambassadors that had their thoughts on what was going on and why, but none of them concretely showed that the aid was ever actually held up. They were able to talk about Rudy Giuliani-led shenanigans into the Ukrainian political scene but none had any worthwhile knowledge about the aid itself.

As for the aid, it went out by the deadline without any strings attached and the President of Ukraine has said numerous times that he never felt pressured or extorted. Now the crime may well have been committed but the House never really got around to making that case. A few reasons the House didn't go down this road: 1) the White House never showed up and forced them to lay out the case; 2) the aid was in fact delivered without penalty, so was there actually a crime?; and 3) pointing out the White House isn't actually able to hold up aid begs a further question: if the POTUS isn't allowed to do this, then why was the POTUS allowed to do this?

The circumstantial evidence did not look good for Trump; it certainly looks as if Trump held up aid in hopes of getting the president of Ukraine to announce an investigation into the workings of Hunter Biden, which presumably would help Trump's re-election efforts. But because the House never went beyond the circumstantial evidence, they left enough room for the White House to maintain a shadow of a doubt: there's enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that Trump's queries all related to the 2016 election, which is the POTUS's job to potentially investigate. And that withholding aid is actually standard procedure, as shown by VP Joe Biden holding up aid in the same place in the same manner in the previous administration. Did Trump look guilty? Yeah, but not guilty enough to my eye to make it a slam dunk. If this was a real trial in a real court, there's plenty there for Trump's lawyers to work with.

And even if he was guilty...guilty of what? Of doing the same thing the previous administration had done? That makes Trump look no more guilty than Obama, and is that really where the House was intending to go with this?  And, again: guilty of what? If a crime had clearly been committed, why was the 1st article of impeachment for the abstract accusation of 'Abuse of Power' and not an actual crime? (*)

It sounds weird to say that Trump didn't participate, doesn't it? Trump was still there every single day in one form or another. But he wasn't ever in the Congress. He wasn't ever in these hearings or in this process. Such is the layout of modern media: the President gets to talk all god damn day long without really ever having to do anything. So when I say Trump ignored the proceedings, I mean he ignored them in the Houses where they took place, he stepped outside of the actual processes and went straight to the American people. Not every president is willing to just be impeached by a grumpy House but Trump will wear this as a badge of pride. And he knew full well that he had the support he needed in the Senate (with or without Mitt Romney, who groveled pretty hard to be Trump's Secretary of State, you may recall).

But more than any of this: impeachment is strictly a political act, not a proper trial, and the votes for removing Trump from office were never there. So why on earth did the House move forward with this action at this time? The House assumed that just flinging around the potential of Trump's electoral paranoia would lead to more revelations and bombshells (not really, mostly just more of what we already knew) and ideally galvanize public opinion against him and/or the Republicans up for reelection in 2020. But the case was flimsy and Trump's masterstroke of ignoring the whole thing worked perfectly. It made the House Dems look like, well a bunch of fantasy-driven masturbators with no real sense of what the truth is or how to get to it.

If the point of this was to remove Trump from office, well that never had much of a shot of succeeding.

If the point of this was to simply convince everyone that Trump is sleazy and self-aggrandizing, well....who didn't already know that?

If the point was to show that House Democrats are fighting for America while everyone else is not, well the shoddy case didn't win me over and the cynicism necessary to do all of this is anathema to any of that high minded feeling.

If the point was to derail Trump's chances of getting reelected, well I don't think this did the job--though it may well have knee-capped Joe Biden for the final time!

If the point was to galvanize Democrats heading into an election year, well the disaster of this year's Iowa Caucus pretty well shot that in the foot.

I just don't see it, I never did see it, I still don't see it.

If the House never bothered to prove the crime, then why on earth were they trying to get to trial? The Senate did the right thing in keeping this to a minimum and getting it over with. We now know that impeachment is just a political tool like any other, hardly the fail-safe device the Founders imagined--and the House has foolishly laid out a blueprint for future presidents to avoid their comeuppance.

I just don't see how any of this was good for America, for Americans, or for the federal gov't. I don't even see how it benefited the Democratic Party, which looks worse in every way today than it did six months ago. (**)



(*) As for the 2nd article, well that was just bullshit from the git-go: the House was eager to remind us over and over again that the Constitution leaves all impeachment power to the House, but I don't see anything in the Constitution that says the Executive has to participate, so citing him for not participating is just manufactured nonsense. Indeed the Founders are the same guys who invented the 5th Amendment, its not hard to imagine that they would've seen Impeachment as something that happens in absentia or with a hostile Executive, so why would the President be expected to participate? And how do you cite him for not doing something he's not required to do?

(**) So do Mitt Romney and Joe Biden get together to form a new party? Can they suck George Soros and the Koch Brothers in? Or how about Michael Bloomberg and Steve Forbes? Can Rand Paul and Amy Klobachar co-exist in the middle? Do Susan Collins and Tulsi Gabbard join the new team? Yeah...none of that sounds right, does it?

Impeachment (Phase Two)

On Friday (the 13th), the House Judiciary Committee passed a resolution to move forward on two counts of impeachment against President Trump. Now the full House will have a vote, probably some time next week. I think we can assume that the vote will go along party lines, meaning Trump will be impeached in the House and then it will move to the Senate, which I think we can also assume will move along party lines and Trump will not be removed.

The Committee held a number of public hearings leading up to this resolution, mostly with various Ambassadors, in proceedings that I thought were quite sober and tasteful, but didn't illuminate much beyond the original July phone transcription that was released in September. There was the one guy that thinks he may have overheard something in someone else's phone call and another lady that indignantly raged against conspiracy theories and the two guys that had conflicting memories of their various conversations. But none of that told us anything new about the nature of any arrangement between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky (*).

The revelation of a working team centered around Rudy Giuliani (and likely included Sec State Pompeo and VP Pence) wasn't new, although the depth of their participation was eye-opening. That said, it is not uncommon for presidents to have their own Special Envoys or even teams that work directly from the White House on specific topics or actions with other nations. Was Giuliani doing anything criminal? I haven't seen any evidence of that (yet). And while it was clear this ruffled the feathers of the Ambassadors, I don't know that there was anything truly out of the ordinary going on (perhaps there was, perhaps not, no one has bothered to make the case either way). Indeed, the fact that these ambassadors had little to offer shows the very nature of Ambassadorships: they're not particularly involved with foreign policy formation, so why would they know anything?

The most celebrated testimony came from Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland. As PBS Newhour reported on November 20: "“I know that members of this Committee have frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a “quid pro quo?” As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes,” Sondland said."  The committee wanted to hear the phrase 'quid pro quo' and they got it but this is not in relation to the military aid but to a White House meeting. But in the course of the case being built this is a bait-and-switch. A White House meeting is always a quid pro quo--indeed, the whole point of a meeting with POTUS is so that he can thank the person for doing what POTUS wanted done! There has never been a White House meeting in all of American history that took place merely because the POTUS had time to kill. Meetings with the POTUS are highly scripted affairs where everyone involved knows precisely what is expected of them, they are planned with full knowledge ahead of time that everyone has/will play their part. And these meetings are often purely political with little benefit to the American people or nation as a whole. To wit: where does it say in the Constitution that the POTUS shall invite the winner of the Super Bowl for a photo-op? What is the 'benefit' to the Republic of such a meeting? It happens every year for purely anodyne reasons and no one complains. And is pardoning a turkey at Thanksgiving every year done for the benefit of the Republic or is it just a bland opportunity for the sitting POTUS to enhance his own public relations? And, good God, what is politicized in Washington more than the State of the Union Address (**), where the POTUS gets to pat himself on the back and call attention to his political allies strategically placed throughout the chamber?

If American support of Ukraine is so important, wouldn't Congress want the POTUS to meet with President Zelensky in a very public fashion that acknowledges we stand with Ukraine against Russia? Why would Congress be punishing the President for a meeting when (a) it's the President's right to meet with whomever he chooses for whatever reason and (b) Congress presumably wants this meeting to take place? So while Sondland's quote won the daily soundbite war, it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. As for holding up aid, the various ambassadors had their various opinions on aid to Ukraine but none exhibited any particular knowledge of what was at work or why. Again: why would they know anything?

And as for the aid itself being 'held up' check out this CNN story from November 26 (https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/26/politics/ukraine-aid-trump-call-omb/index.html). The first paragraph says: "The White House budget office's first official action to withhold $250 million in Pentagon aid to Ukraine came on the evening of July 25, the same day President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on the phone, according to a House Budget Committee summary of the office's documents." Then the third paragraph says: "A hold was placed on the Ukraine aid at the beginning of July, and the agencies were notified at a July 18 meeting that it had been frozen at the direction of the President, a week before the Trump-Zelensky call." Wait...what?

So was it held up on July 25? Or July 18? Or the 'beginning of July'? Was it before the phone call or after? Why is this so hard to figure out? And why hasn't this timeline been explicitly laid out if the aid being held up is so central to this proceeding?

And what of Zelensky himself? Did he feel pressure to actually do any of the things Trump wanted from him? On September 25 Time Magazine (***) published (https://time.com/5686305/zelensky-ukraine-denies-trump-pressure/) that Zelensky "Denied Trump Pressured Him to Investigate Biden's Son" based on a joint press conference Zelensky and Trump held that day where Zelensky said: "Nobody pushed me." But on November 18 Time published (https://time.com/5731647/ukraine-trump-biden-investigation-anxiety/) that "US Officials Knew Ukraine Felt 'Pressure' from Trump Administration to Investigate Biden" based on a May 7 closed-door meeting that included then-current US Ambassador to Ukraine Yovanovich. But even the weird CNN article above doesn't suggest that the Ukraine aid was held up in May, so...how does this time line work? And if the 'pressured' person says he wasn't pressured, then...how does...any of this...wait, what?

Was the aid actually held up? We've long since accepted that this as a basic fact but the 'prosecution' (re: the House Judiciary Committee) has not explicitly put the details forward and the defense (re: POTUS) has yet to participate in the proceedings, so are we sure this even happened? And if the person who has been pressured has said publicly he was not pressured, then has anything actually happened? How is it possible for a President to hold up aid? And what particular mechanisms did Trump employ and what was his stated rationale at the time and to whom? This should be quite easy to figure out, I don't understand why we don't know this yet.

What it looks like to me is that Trump tried to extort a gratuity for himself based on an already approved deal. The bi-partisan support for Ukraine suggests that this particular aid package was ironclad and Trump saw an opportunity for himself to get a little something extra out of Zelensky. Has the case been proved? The circumstantial evidence doesn't look good but I'd say there's enough legal room to reach an acquittal, which all serves to remind us that this is not a courtroom trial but a purely procedural vote that is more often than not just a party line expression. At the end of the day, Trump did not get the investigation he sought and Ukraine got the aid they were earmarked, so did anything actually happen? Is the attempt to possibly commit a crime really worth this much time and energy?

Assuming Trump is guilty of this attempted extortion, is this worthy of an impeachment in the House? Again, it doesn't matter whether it is 'worthy', all that matters is the vote itself. Thus, impeachment is, or can be, a relatively meaningless piece of agitprop. Is this worthy of removal of the POTUS? No. Now if the House showed that Trump had done this before or that this kind of grease was a pattern of behavior, then you'd have something. If Trump was systematically abusing power with, say, Lebanon, Taiwan, Poland, etc., then that would be worthy of shipping him out. But I don't see that case being made.

Indeed, the most galling thing about this procedure is the suggestion that this is the worst thing Trump has done in office. Seriously? Trump has completely warped USA's trade relations, most specifically with China, based on some minuscule, vague wording about national defense and the House thinks needling the President of Ukraine for something that means very little to Ukraine (or I would suggest to the American electorate) is worthy of impeachment? This is an abrogation of responsibility dressed up as an attempt do the right thing. *smh*

Trump's approval ratings are a stunning anomaly: no amount of Trump success makes them go up and no amount of Trump failures make them go down. Truly amazing and probably indicative of what future Presidents must have. Has the impeachment damaged Trump? I'd say not at all. People who don't like Trump are eager to rush for any excuse to get him out of office but this impeachment proceeding only makes him stronger, I think.

So here's the new conspiracy theory: the House likes Trump's bizarre trading rationale vis-a-vis China and they know no one else is dumb enough to maintain such a potentially suicidal policy. President Hillary would've talked tough but wouldn't really have done much (especially since she, too, was backing away from TPP during the 2016 campaign), likewise with President Warren, President Biden would soft pedal China, President Bernie absolutely wouldn't treat China this way. Congress likes Trump's belligerent, haphazard treatment of China and they want him to keep doing it--they likely even see it as the most important thing on our current agenda. So they're rousting up Trump's base heading into the 2020 election. Honestly, I can't see any other rationale. Pelosi gets to say, 'Trump was evil and we tried to get him out'? Uhh, not really, as this does very little to make that happen. Or does this presage another impeachment in the future? Is a POTUS that has been impeached but not removed multiple times look like a big win for the Democrats? It doesn't to me but I'm not a Democrat.

I just don't get this. The case is not a slam dunk, the victim has claimed no victimhood, the Republic is not advanced by this impeachment any more than it was advanced by an investigation into Hunter Biden, the House has spent all of its political capital on a whimper rather than actually ginning up some interesting or useful legislation and the Democrats are really just beating the same dead horse they were going to be beating even this impeachment never happened. I think the whole point of this was to create enough ongoing controversy around Trump that Republicans in the House and the Senate up for reelection would have to deal with in a thorny uncomfortable way, potentially influencing those elections or at least interrupting the ability for the Republicans in general to raise funds. But I don't see that taking place. The only silver lining for Democrats: with Trump in office, donations to Dems are probably gonna be way up. What else gets achieved here? I...don't...see anything.

If this is the worst thing Trump has done in the last three years then he is officially the cleanest POTUS we've ever had. All this sturm und drang to convince us that Trump is a self-aggrandizing sleazy guy...dude, I already knew that. This has done nothing at all for anyone except Trump's chances for re-election. (****)



(*) Honestly the part I find most vexing is that Trump didn't seem to care about an investigation, he merely wanted an announcement of an investigation. I don't really know what to make of that. If the investigation will yield damning evidence about Hunter Biden, don't the American people to deserve to know? Likewise, if an investigation completely exonerates Hunter Biden, don't the American people deserve to know that? Seems like an investigation of Hunter Biden would only be damaging to the candidacy of Joe Biden if--and only if--it reveals disturbing revelations about Hunter Biden (and even then: do people really give a shit about what Hunter Biden does in Ukraine?). It seems to me there really can't be any effect on the 2020 USA election until AFTER the investigation is completed and revealed. And even then, it would only potentially effect how people vote, which is not an effect on the election itself. So what good/bad/otherwise is accrued from an announcement of an investigation if no subsequent investigation is performed? WTF, dude? I don't understand how any of this effects anything in any way and the fact that Trump only wanted the appearance of an investigation makes even less sense.

(**) The Constitution says an annual State of the Union shall be given to the Congress by the President. But it doesn't say it has to be televised in prime time for the sake of the POTUS tooting his own horn or making a display of his political cronies. This is an annual disgrace the Republic would be better off getting rid of.

(***) I've generally been trying to link to Left-wing media sites but, honestly I had no idea Time Magazine still existed, so not sure whether they'd be right or left at this point. When I was kid Time and Newsweek were the only political magazines around, they always seemed rather bland in that softly Left way that for-real 'journalism' used to pride itself on. Now I dunno what Time is like or who reads it. Although, if the November 18 article went back to a May 7 meeting, why didn't Time know about that on September 25?

(****) As a voting American I assure you I couldn't care less what Hunter Biden was doing in Ukraine. If the Ukrainians were so offended by his conduct that they had to indict him or deport him or whatever, that is entirely their business. But even then, Hunter Biden's activities would have no effect whatsoever on my vote. Also, for what it's worth, now seems like the most perfectly awkward moment to admit that Joe Biden is one of the very very very few politicians of my life time that I actually like. And watching Democrats shy away from not merely their best candidate in general but the only one that I think can actually beat Trump...and, well, the Pelosi-wants-Trump-to-win conspiracy theory begins to look plainly obvious.

Me (Part One)

I listened to a podcast the other day of two foreign policy gurus trying to rigidly define their own philosophical beliefs. Frankly I thought it was an annoying conversation and kinda pointless. But I invariably found myself trying to define my own views in reference to their beltway delineations. I'd like to get to an examination of my larger philosophical views but I feel like I have to place myself within the contemporary political milieu before I move on.

I've written this here before but just to reiterate: I grew up in a Libertarian household. I am not a Libertarian but I highlight this for two reasons: 1) I have never been a Democrat or a Republican and feel no fealty to either party and 2) I believe the gov't's purpose is to protect and promote the citizenry's access to free markets, anything else discussed is just politics, not gov't. I am not a natural born political person, indeed I eschew all that partisan stuff with a fury. The parties are not the gov't and their manipulative bickering is utterly self-serving and only tangentially beneficial to the republic (if at all). The flaw of the Republican Party is that they want unlimited economic growth but they don't want anything to ever change socially (which clearly ignores the fact that economic growth is a result of innovation (re: new stuff) which by its very nature is either a cause or effect of some change in the society); the flaw of the Democratic Party is they want unlimited personal expression but they don't see that as a function of living in a thriving economy (I'm not going to make the argument that rich people are better than poor people, but its clear that wealthier people have more opportunities of expression and by extension more self to express and by locking people into poverty you are cutting off their ability to grow as human beings; thus the point is to grow as many people wealthy as possible)). Also, I'm a foreign policy watcher as opposed to being a domestic political animal, which makes the Libertarian Party pretty much useless to me, as they seem to think that beyond America's borders is nothing but ocean. So I have no political affiliation and I find our contemporary cultural fascination with making everything political to be self-defeating (and really annoying).

The current political obsession (at least what I get from NPR each morning when my alarm goes off) is Donald Trump's relation to Russian provocateurs during the 2016 election. My gut feeling is that in an investigation of this sort Trump and his crew are the easiest part to follow, such that anything there is to find has already been found. What smoking guns could possibly be out there at this point? In the political realm, this doesn't matter. The point is to extend the investigation merely to besmirch Trump's reputation (wow, that's like throwing rotten fruit at a pile of rotten vegetables!) and I expect the investigation to last at least through the mid-term elections in November with or without new revelations. Do I have a rooting interest? No, not really. This is just what politicians do to each other nowadays. Ever since Newt Gingrich went full throttle after Bill Clinton in the 1990s, this is just par for the course (I'm sure this behavior goes further back than that, but that's my personal recollection). And if Trump is guilty (or guilty-looking enough) to get impeached, what do I care? We'll just get a new president that I probably won't pay much attention to and who will inherit a large chunk of population dedicated to thwarting him on day one regardless of his interactions with Russian trolls (indeed, if we think of Trump as illegitimate, wouldn't we think that even more of Pence?).

Do I think Donald Trump is guilty of collusion with Russian agents? No, but that doesn't really matter. I have no doubt that foreign agents are cyber-attacking the USA every single day, which is why I paid no mind to the original accusations against Hillary Clinton before the election. Dude, I assure you the Pentagon and the State Department are getting hacked right now (and will be again if you read these words again), it's just the way of things these days. I doubt Hillary Clinton did less than her duty in protecting the contents of gov't servers and I doubt Donald Trump did either--which is not to say that either or both of them are innocent of malfeasance. Cybersecurity is a full time job and I doubt Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump (or Vladimir Putin) have ever held that job or pondered very deeply on the topic. And why stop at the gov't? Amazon, Wal-Mart, Facebook and Google have much more valuable stores of info waiting to be hacked--the difference is they're actually going to do something about it whereas the gov't is always last to figure out what's going on.

I'll go ahead and say something controversial: I believe that Donald Trump won the 2016 election because Americans went to the polls and voted for him. I don't know why they did and I'm convinced that Trump was as surprised by that as I was, but I believe the Americans chose the person they wanted to be president free from Russian interference. Were Russians interfering? Oh, undoubtedly, as Russians hackers attempt to interfere with everything all the time, whether or not there's an election on. But Americans aren't swayed by Facebook, it is a place to confirm what they already believe, not a place to encounter new ideas.

Investigations have already proven that Russian agents took out numerous Facebook ads in 2016...this is proof to me that there was no Russian interference. How many Japanese Facebook ads were there in 2016? How about Ethiopian? French? Lithuanian? Or do we assume that Russia is the only country that has access to Facebook and a rooting interest in American elections? And let me get this straight: is the Mueller investigation trying to prove that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in a hotel room in Atlantic City so that Trump could help Putin....buy some Facebook ads? Hmmm, I doubt that happened and even if it did, it doesn't have anything to do with the election. Were Russian hackers meddling in American affairs? Yes, of course they were. They still are and have been for as long as computers have been available in Russia. What does that have to do with Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? Nothing. Why would it?

I say all that to dismiss this political witchhunt stuff pronto. I doubt that anything nefarious happened, I doubt that it would matter even if nefarious things did happen, I doubt there'd be proof available to find if anything happened anyway, and I doubt that any of it had any effect on the election. And even if I'm completely wrong and Trump is guilty, I still don't care. I am convinced this is all just political noise (*). Putting the executive under permanent investigation isn't necessarily a bad thing, though in this environment, it's just prurient entertainment rather than serious inquiry, which is sad and wasteful but not atypical in our culture. I would note at the moment that the waste is mostly on the Left: every morning that NPR babbles about Trump it's a morning they're not babbling about the environment or labor relations or healthcare or race issues, etc. NPR is abrogating their responsibility to a myriad of other issues because they'd rather feed the schadenfreude of their Hillary-voting listeners. Oh well, their loss.

Do I like Donald Trump? No. The nicest thing I can say about him is I rather enjoy having a president that I can comfortably ignore. My problem with Barack Obama for example was that I kept trying to like the guy, but what was there to like? His empty rhetoric was more gentle and soothing than most politicians...but every bit as empty. At least with Trump I am confident I have no chance of liking him or in any way needing to hear anything he says. A friend of mine recently lamented the awful spectacle kids today are growing up with, but I think its good for children to learn early on that the President of the United States is not really someone worth paying attention to. POTUS is a fungible commodity and as I've suggested in previous posts, it is a purely political position with more responsibility than power and thus mostly just a suffering of slings and arrows. I don't need the President to reassure me or entertainment me or whatever it is people get out of listening to the President talk. And with Trump around, that feeling is only magnified.

As a foreign policy guy, have I seen any changes in American policy in Trump's first year? Not really. North Korea has dominated Trump's agenda so far but I would suggest that North Korea is a can that presidents have been kicking down the road for decades and the end of the road seems to be approaching. Trump has seized on it for the purpose of selling weapons systems in Asia the way Obama seized on Putin's adventures in Ukraine to sell weapon systems in Eastern Europe. Trump is a little louder than previous presidents but the policy itself is no different. (I think as soon as the Winter Olympics is over all the rhetoric from both sides will ramp back up and I think military action is a strong possibility; I'll expand on this in a future post)

Trade policy is clearly something Trump...well, talks a lot about. Yes, he kinda talks like a Neanderthal but rhetoric is part of the process. The reportage of rhetoric is part of it too: NAFTA re-negotiations were set to take place regardless of who won the election but if Hillary had been elected I'm sure we'd hear less about it. The American public would probably just get random vague updates of 'everything's fine' whether it was fine or not; whereas Trump's style is to bluster around in public when this is the kind of thing most politicians would soft pedal in the press. Oh well, that's the man's style. Maybe it'll work, maybe not. I dunno. I can understand why people wouldn't like his style but I wouldn't say that the style in and of itself is illegitimate or guaranteed to fail. I don't know that it is. Is the actual negotiation any different? Probably not. The negotiations themselves will be handled by a variety of under-secretaries steeped in farm subsidies and tobacco regulations and emissions measurements and blah blah blah details that no single person could possibly understand. I think the public relations is unique to Trump but the actual deal itself is not likely to be wildly different from what President Hillary would've ended up with.

Both disavowed the TPP (which actually perfectly dovetailed with Trump's wariness of China though he never seemed to notice that), with Trump suggesting that multi-lateral deals are inherently bad; I don't mind more bi-lateral deals but to suggest the multi-lateral deals are a priori bad is just a dumb thing for a president to say even if he actually believes it.

Trump removed USA from the Paris Climate Accord. Meh. The Accord itself is nothing but symbolism and removing USA from the Accord is also nothing but symbolism. And when the next president puts USA back in the Accord, it'll still be nothing but symbolism. I don't see that it has any effect whatsoever on the actual environment or even on the nature of int'l environmental negotiation. In short, the Accord never meant anything to me so USA not being in it doesn't mean anything to me (and USA inevitably triumphantly returning to it will still mean nothing to me). Removing USA from the Accord was just a piece of pure rhetoric designed to be a finger in the eye of Trump's political enemies (because...well, honestly, the Accord doesn't have any other purpose). Yeah, I think it's stupid but the way politicians talk to each other has been stupid for hundreds of years (**).

Trump pledged to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, causing much uproar around the globe. But why? Do you realize that Congress just passed that same resolution last summer? Do you realize that every American president since HW Bush (and most all of the losing candidates) have made the same pledge? Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is something that has been pledged numerous times in the last 20 years, why does everyone care now? Moving an embassy will take at least 10 years, no way this happens until after Trump's well out of office--which is the same as saying it won't happen. So this move that won't happen that has been promised many times before...why does everyone care now? Y'all pay much too attention to Trump. He's just a doofus with a Twitter account. But he's president, you say; yeah, the president is a doofus with a Twitter account. He's president so most everything he says is gonna be empty nonsense and he's Donald Trump, which only ups the percentage of empty nonsense to come from his mouth. So why does everyone pay attention to him? I don't get it, I find him very easy to ignore.

Trump constantly threatens to revoke (or rescind or not renew or whatever the proper language is) the Iran nuclear accord. Critics of Trump suggest this is simply a move to un-do the Obama legacy and while that is certainly part of Trump's calculus, I think these critics are underestimating the power this talk has on Iran's actions. The recent protests in Iran were largely about the Iranian population's dissatisfaction with gov't spending and foreign policy signaling a desire for a gov't more responsive to the citizenry. Now I don't think the Iranian leadership is feeling particularly threatened by this but they have been warned that the people will be pissed if the economy returns to its pre-nuclear deal state. And Trump can exert a great deal of leverage over that. Most presidents are more politic about how they use their leverage, most aren't as naked as Trump, but all presidents do what they need to do to get the best deal. All of them. So, again, while his style is kinda crass, in this case the end effect is not wildly out of line from what US presidents do all the time.

Trump's obsession with border walls, travel restrictions and trade embargoes strikes me as a serious step backward that I cannot endorse in any way. But realistically they are tools available to an executive and politically speaking they're not wildly out of left field. Bill Clinton built most of the wall we currently have with Mexico (which was initially built by Mexico, incidentally). Countries have borders, sometimes delineated by walls but virtually always accompanied by some kind of bureaucratic formality. I personally don't believe more walls are necessary, barriers work both ways and I'm never in favor of more of them. But discussing how best to protect our borders is not inherently racist or even xenophobic. It wouldn't be the top of my agenda if I were president--and I don't agree with Trump's position--but the fact that he has a position is not shocking or particularly threatening. This is all part of the debate that gov'ts have.

As for travel restrictions I'll resort to another contemporary political argument: gun advocates like to suggest that regulating guns will only leave guns in the hands of the criminals as the laws are only effective on the law-abiding. Likewise with travel restrictions: the 'bad dudes' you're trying to keep out will find some other method to get here because they're not coming here to follow the laws. The only people affected by travel restrictions are the people that will honor our customs--which is precisely the people we should welcome! This is is the one area of Trump's potential alienation of our allies that worries me: we're more likely to keep out allies than enemies with policies or even rhetoric like this.

Trade barriers are stupid 100% of the time. Trade should be unfettered forever. Even in the middle of war, I'd be inclined to trade with our enemies. Trade is a human right not a hostage of the State!

Trump wants to increase military spending, but that's certainly nothing new. I perceive this as a subtle reach toward bi-partisanship more than militaristic bluster.

Trump is critical of NATO and while I don't want to say I agree with him, I do think he has a point: Europe should be embracing their own defense as a means of establishing a common identity and to funnel their energies into their own protection rather than waiting for someone else to do it. I don't say that as an aggrieved American but as someone that wants to see a strong Europe. I think Europe is missing a big opportunity to coalesce and industrialize and become truly more independent. The EU merely takes baby steps in this direction and Trump hasn't actually instituted any kind of diminution of American influence in NATO, which I think even he would see as a mistake. I would suggest NATO is a clear example of the difference between his rhetoric (riling up voters for America first-ness) and reality (NATO gives USA ungodly amounts of control over Europe, foolish for any president to give that up).

Cyber-security, for better or worse, is something Trump is going to reshape considerably. I know nothing about that stuff but I can tell it's high priority in the bureaucracy these days. I can only hope the powers that be (and that surely does not include Trump) will make the right choices and allocate wisely. (Won't stop Russian trolls--or other foreign entities--from meddling in our elections, though. Just saying...)

Domestically, Trump was able to push through a tax cut, which his benefactors must've truly appreciated (and given the looming interest rate hikes coming in 2018, probably not a bad idea for economic stimulation). And he was more or less able to deconstruct Obama-care but I'm undecided on that topic: the larger population needs something but I don't know that Obama-care was it. I was impressed by its ability to make insurance available to more people but not impressed with its ability to make AFFORDABLE insurance available to more people. (And, oh by the way: insurance is not healthcare, it is the monied bureaucracy behind healthcare, which is not at all the same thing. The fact that we started with more bureaucracy rather than more healthcare was the red flag that Obama-care was not the savior of our republic. That said, scrapping it without a new plan in place is hardly a bold leap forward) I suspect that after November Trump may introduce some new health care plans (I recall him being a fan of dedicated savings accounts for healthcare, which isn't a bad start).

And, yeah, Trump talks talks talks in a manner that the NPR crowd really can't stand. But what do I care? 30 seconds of NPR and I'm out of bed turning off the radio like a champ. Otherwise...I dunno....is there something truly noteworthy about Trump? He's an idiot (Touche. But hardly America's first idiot). He's sexist and racist (Oh, he's a pig but I'm not sure how deeply that touches his legislative or foreign policy agenda; his weakness is blind support for the people that support him). He's bad for our children (Too much TV or social media is bad for everyone and that's where you're most likely to see Trump, so to preserve your health, turn it off). He's bad for gov't (I'd say the worst part of Trump on that level is that he was so shocked to win that he was way behind on a proper transition team which has left him with numerous unfilled posts and surrounded by folks that can't survive the political tribulations; but I can't help thinking that that's his problem, not mine). I dunno....are there other complaints?

I don't like Trump, I just don't care about him or his pointless talk (I suspect I'd think the same of President Hillary). I wanted to like President Obama but he was such a weak executive and he wasn't a foreign policy guy. I wanted to dislike George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, but rather liked them both. I didn't realize how much I liked HW Bush until he was long out of office. To echo the author David Halberstam: I didn't care for President Reagan but a lot of folks that I respect liked him a lot, so I feel conflicted. I only vaguely remember Jimmy Carter (but my studies have led me to believe he was one of the worst presidents we've ever had and that the mid-1970's in general were among America's most difficult periods to govern in a variety of ways). I don't remember Ford (and he doesn't really count anyway) and Nixon was gone by the time I was of TV-watching age. Those are the presidents of my lifetime. (***)

I was hoping to avoid ever talking about Trump on this blog but I felt I had to get a belch of it out of the way before I moved on to other things. So in future posts I will return to the opening paragraph and try to define myself as myself now that I've tried to place myself within the contemporary landscape. (Whew! I look forward to never thinking about most of this domestic junk ever again!)


(*) If the goal is to get Trump impeached, I'd suggest going after these porn star liaisons that are coming out of the woodwork. If he's paying them off out of campaign funds, then lawsuits start happening and Congress gets moving. This Russia stuff is not really meant to be discovered--do you think Congressional Republicans really wanted to know what was going on in Benghazi? No, they just wanted to look like they were trying to get to the bottom of something. And Mueller is hoping every day that he finds only enough to string this along and let other events dictate whether he condemns Trump or not.

(**) Go back and study the election of 1800. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams--those guys are on your money!--saying the most embarrassing, mean-spirited lies about each other just to be president. Its sad and stupid and wasteful and the way we've been doing it since the very beginning. If you think it used to be better then you've never studied history.

(***) And just for good measure, here's a quick rundown of the thwarted candidates of my lifetime: Mondale (good god, I think he would've been awful), Dukakis (such a poor candidate, so uninspiring, had so little to offer), Dole (born to be in the Senate, don't see why he even wanted the White House), Gore (don't get me started: one of my least favorite humans of all time), Kerry (didn't even looked like he wanted to be president, though I thought a shockingly competent Secretary of State), McCain (meh, he was too old, didn't really think one way or the other about him), Romney (the ultimate stuffed shirt Republican), Hillary (I've written on this blog that I thought her presidency would have been like George W. Bush's presidency with a bit more success in pragmatic bi-partisanship).

Trumped!

Okay, I was caught off guard by the Trump landslide. I'm less surprised by the Republicans keeping the House and Senate but I didn't see Trump astriding the Republican colossus. The real eye-opening part of watching last night's return: I kinda knew this but, man, I didn't realize how badly America hates Hillary Clinton. I knew she had her detractors, she had her doubters and she was an uncommonly dull candidate for a Democrat but I thought there was enough skepticism of Trump and enough of a left-wing groundswell to keep Hillary around for four more years. Nope. She is officially done as a public persona in America. And Donald Trump's career just took an unexpected setback. Trump is about to realize what I have long known: President of the United States of America is the ultimate dead end job. He could've been out making big money being a loud mouth political type, instead he's stuck actually governing. What a drag for that guy.

As I wrote in a previous post, the Congress runs the government while the President gets all the attention. We may think we just witnessed a revolution of the right wing weirdos but I would suggest the opportunity has swung back for the Republican establishment to treat Trump like a pinata for the next four years and purge the party of the loons. We'll see. To that end, I think the real winner last night was Paul Ryan: he has the job of herding cats (stupid ass Republican cats, no less) but if he can build a coalition within the House and a bridge to McConnell in the Senate, he can pretty well do whatever he wants for the next 2-4 years. I have a bold suggestion for each of the Republican leaders: McConnell should immediately affirm Merrick Garland (I kinda like him and I think he could bring a fascinating shift to the Court) and Ryan should immediately push through whatever immigration bill (*) he thinks he wants. I think its important for both houses of Congress to give an early thumb to the eye of the new President (that they don't actually like) by removing the only two things he might genuinely have an interest in. Encourage President Trump to reform NATO (yeah, go solve that Europe problem, Don, we'll take care of everything til you get back) and pick up where Michelle Obama left that obesity epidemic.

Since I'm hanging on the notion that last night was about vanquishing Hillary more than welcoming Trump, I am still skeptical of Trump's popularity. Who likes this guy? The guy just got 100 million votes and I still can't figure out who actually wants this man to be president--including the man himself! The idea that Trump is gonna clean up Washington is just straight foolish. He has no idea how to accomplish that task and who the fuck is gonna help him figure it out? Under Obama the Republican Congress just laid low but under Trump they'll have a mandate to do what they want with an Executive to rubber stamp their desires and offer little resistance. Trump didn't get rich by being a consensus builder and in DC he'll be so out of his element, he'll just yap and yap and do nothing at all. I think Ryan and McConnell will effectively control him behind the scenes and sponge off his popularity enough to look like real statesmen. Ideally, after four years Trump will be tired of being president and the Republican establishment will be back in control (look for Cruz to get marginalized and Rand Paul better do something bold or he'll be long gone by 2020), ready to take a real run at the White House (how about a Ryan/Rubio ticket in 2020?). Meanwhile the Democrats will have a few years of loudly suffering to develop some kind of hero by 2020 (sorry, kids, I don't think Elizabeth Warren is that guy and who drank more sad gulps of Chivas last night than Joe Biden?).

I'm not a political guy but I found myself more amused than I thought I would be by watching the liberals flounder and look all aggrieved. When they're in control their self-important smugness is unbearable, their moral pseudo-superiority is maddening and the way the fall prey to their own malformed observations is embarrassing. And, of course, political losers always portray the victors as...(fill in generational pejorative)...and themselves as kindly victims wondering why God lets bad things happen to good people. Conservatives are uptight assholes no matter what happens and George W. Bush was so tired of being president that I didn't get the same joy of watching the Obama revolution sweep out the last of red hot Cheneys.    

Is Trump dangerous? Good lord, I think he'll be the most ineffective President since Carter--and I just thought that about the last guy! I see no scenario where Donald Trump wants to be re-elected in 2020. He'll enjoy the inauguration (legendary for executive blow jobs!) but by Day Two, he'll be ready to pull the ejector seat and get back to where he once belonged. Foreign policy-wise I think he could have some minor successes but they'll be the kind that disappoint his most ardent supporters. In short, Tuesday night was his absolute peak in this business, nothing but a black diamond slope in his future. And this Presidency will soak up what influence he might've had, as opposed to Obama who will be a beloved public figure for the next 30 years, Trump will be shown to be ineffective and useless and defeated. Coke-fueled benders in the White House are probably a total drag, no fun at all, and tweeting about fat chicks at 3 in the morning will eventually get him murdered by his bodyguards. Seriously, I'm kinda feeling sorry for the guy, his life is ruined! He thinks his parents are on vacation and he's got the whole house to himself but, no, he's gotta run the family business 24 hours a day instead. This ain't doggie heaven, it's doggie hell.

Mitch McConnell is old, his job is to groom the next old white guy to dominate the Republican side of the Senate. But Paul Ryan could be the one, he's the ascendant star right now. And if he pulls the House Republicans together, he'll rule Washington for the next few years while the Democrats point all their weapons at hapless Trump.


(* Immigration is the ultimate pointless American debate: every 20 years or so since 1650 the locals have complained about interlopers and the local constabulary hems and haws and pretends to do something about it and the never does because deep down they kinda like the newcomers and are powerless to stop them anyway. Immigration is a function of economics not politics but political animals think nothing is beyond their entreaties. When the economy dried up in 2007 so did immigration to America, the rednecks didn't notice but the chances of them getting served by the political sphere is just as remote under Trump as it was under Obama. He'll give them a voice but will he give them actual power? Oh, come on, man! Remember Trump wasn't elected by rich white people, he was elected by poor white people--and even then it was only because the minorities where wary of Hillary)

Death of Justice Scalia

Wow, this was a bombshell! The death of a sitting justice is always awkward but in the lame duck period of the sitting president and an election year, this will throw the Court of whack for probably two years.

First -- This season's Court docket was loaded with controversial cases: abortion, affirmative action, executive power, immigration, etc. To lose a Justice in the midst of this will result in a lot of inconclusive results. And considering that the next Supreme Court season starts before the election, that means 2016-17 will roll with only 8 justices, too. (Hell, a new nominee couldn't even up for confirmation for another year, virtually impossible for Scalia's replacement to have any impact until the 2017-18 season) So the next few years should pile up quite a backlog before the next Justice even gets to take the oath.

Next -- Will President Obama be able to replace him? Well...I mean...no fuckin' way, right? The Republican Congress hasn't let Obama do anything for the last 8 years, what are the chances they're gonna let him stick a new Justice on the Court right as he's leaving office? The stonewall will begin pronto, I reckon. And does the stonewalling on this issue avalanche into a complete denial of Obama's impact or will it lead into some trade-offs? For example, I suspect the Republican Congress really wants to pass TPP, especially considering how negative all of the current presidential candidates are on the topic, but they're hesitant to give Obama any victories. But Congress might throw Obama a bone on TPP because Congress really wants to pass it anyway; or it may get bound up with Scalia's death and go out with the bathwater, leaving the next president to decide whether it comes back ext year.

Down the Line -- This really throws a wrench into the current presidential campaigns, especially on the Republican side. Cruz would nominate another Scalia but Trump would not (indeed, I suspect Trump might reach out to Janice Rogers Brown, a 3rd rail personality on both sides of the political divide who might look to Trump like an interesting prize). Rubio, like Cruz, would probably favor another hard core Catholic right winger but Bush wouldn't, nor would (I suspect) Kasich. Obviously they'll all want a right winger but in this crowd there are varying levels of cultural conservatism and being hard core on economic and political issues may or may not lend itself to telling gays who can they make paperwork with. If the Republican electorate really paid attention, the next Supreme Court nomination might make all the difference in this race. Also, paradoxically, it makes Trump the moderate candidate as he is...well, let's be honest: he's a Democrat, not a Republican, so we have to assume he'd be looking for a Kennedy more than a Thomas. On the Democrat side, it's a much easier call: both Sanders and Clinton would look for the next Elena Kagan.

Obviously Justice Scalia himself was a polarizing figure and most folks will comment purely on whether they liked or disliked him. Personally, I don't really care. Whether I agreed with him or not, I thought he was thoroughly competent justice and had as much right to speak his mind as anyone we've ever put on the Court. (The problem with Americans is they think have to like everything, Democracy leads to inevitable power of popularity. Said it before, I'll say it again: Democracy is way overrated) I'm more interested in the extremely awkward timing of his passing. The Court will be in turmoil for probably two years, something not unheard of in American history, but not something I've seen in my lifetime.