We'll start off by looking at the excerpts from Bob Woodward's new book, which the Washington Post and others reported on from an advance copy. Overall, it doesn't reveal anything new, per se, it just gives us more specifics on what a complete shit show this administration is. From calling Jeff Sessions retarded, to wanting to assassinate Bashar al- Assad, to just forgetting to pull out of a trade deal with South Korea because Gary Cohn just took the order off Trump's desk before he could sign it, the book is apparently filled to the brim with stories of a beleaguered staff doing whatever they can to hold off the worst impulses of the most unqualified president in history. None of this should be shocking, since the only thing Trump has ever proven competent at is keeping his cadre of bootlicking supporters to overlook his constant, repeated failures. Everyone who spoke out against his candidacy said that this is what his presidency would be and now the book is just confirming our ability to point out the obvious.
The most damaging anecdote for me is the one that pertains to Trump's former attorney John Dowd. In a mock-Mueller interview, Trump collapsed and went on a 30-minute rant that kicked off with "This is a goddamned hoax!" Dowd, seemingly finally realizing just how terrible his client was, told Trump not to testify because it was that "or an orange jump suit." Amazingly, after he had a complete meltdown in a practice session, Trump still thought that he'd be a "real good witness." Dowd also said Mueller couldn't interview Trump because our allies would say "I told you he was an idiot. I told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. What are we dealing with this idiot for?” Two things: 1. It's bold of Dowd to assume they weren't-or aren't- already doing that and 2. How bad do you have to be when you're own lawyer is basically begging the man investigating your client not to interview him because it'd make us an international disgrace?
If that wasn't bad enough for Trump, The New York Times publish an anonymous op-ed from someone claiming to be an administration official telling the world all about how the Cabinet members are all quietly working to sabotage Trump's worst impulses. Before anyone gets into the mindset of believing the op-ed writer's justifications that they're doing this because they feel they have a higher duty to the country than just the president, I'm gonna stop you right there because that rationale is, in a word, horseshit. I think the anonymous author and his cohorts honestly believe that what they're doing is for the good of the country, but that to me reads more as a surface level explanation that serves a deeper, more cynical end. Because here's the thing, if you're actively sabotaging the president you work for, than you obviously believe that that president is unfit to hold the office. As it happens, the Constitution provides a way for the Cabinet to remove a president who is mentally unfit or otherwise incapable of performing the duties of the office and that is the 25th amendment. The relevant section in this case is Section 4 which reads, in full:
"Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office."
In plain English, the VP and a majority of the of the Cabinet officers tells Congress that the president can't preform his duties, Trump, in this case, sends a letter saying "Nuh-uh", to which VP et al. send another letter saying "Double Nuh-uh" and then Congress votes on it to decide either way. Think of it as a presidential vote of no confidence. Anyway, the author name checks the amendment as something his fellows discussed but ultimately decided against because they "didn't want to cause a constitutional crisis" so they decided on a game of low-key sabotage instead because hey, it's Trump, he's too stupid to notice.
So why do I think all this self-congratulations isn't as sincere as the writer would have us believe? In short, it's because all these people want to work again. Every once in a while, Politico or someone else will run a story about how all the Trump staffers who work in the administration can't get a job or a date because everyone's disgusted by them. What's more, the author, and by extension, his colleagues, are all die-hard Republican partisans. The author laments at one point about how the press is ignoring the actual "accomplishments" of the administration like "effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more." For context, one of those proposed effective deregulations is from the EPA concerning power plant emissions. It's an Obama-era rule (of course) that the EPA estimates prevented up to 11,000 deaths a year, so that's nice. Let's also not forget about how the FCC repealed net neutrality which lead us to the wonderful situation of Verizon throttling firefighters phones and trying to bilk them for a higher data plan while they fighting the (current) largest wildfire in California history. The tax cuts are nothing more than the outright transfer of wealth to the super rich, so uh, score one for the oligarchy, I guess?
Point is, these people don't have any actual problem with what Trump is doing, they just have a problem with him, specifically. They see the writing on the wall, they've undoubtedly read all those same articles detailing how their former compatriots association with Trump has poisoned every aspect of their lives, they've got front-row seats to see Trump's reactions to Cohen's guilty plea, Manafort's conviction, and how his financial adviser was given immunity by the Mueller investigation. They definitely saw that leaked GOP spreadsheet that lists every investigation the Democrats could potentially launch into the Trump White House if they retake the House in the midterms. So yeah, the walls must feel a little closer than they used to be, so before the tide really starts turning, all these people who will probably need jobs sooner rather than later want to give themselves some cover.
Which brings us back to this op-ed. For all its claims about higher duty and what they feel they owe to the American public etc. etc. this op-ed is more of a signal to the monied and professional political world that when they get ex-Trump staffers looking for work, those people will be able to say "Did you read that Times op-ed? I was one of the people it was talking about." It's a way for the rats to set up some cover when they start fleeing the sinking ship or if Trump starts mass firing people they can point to the op-ed as the reason why; that they were tragically found out and now can't protect America from the degradation's of the Trump presidency any longer.
For all the talk about wanting to protect America and it's constitutional republic from the whims of an anti-democratic president, the author and his cohorts are doing nothing more than the literal bare minimum to stop him and explicitly say they refuse to use the constitutional methods provided to them to remove Trump from office. So instead of doing the brave, principled thing, these people are going the underhanded and unaccountable route while they wait for other people to solve a problem they're too cowardly to directly confront. I'm sure that there won't be any negative consequences now that the famously paranoid, conspiratorial, and retaliatory president they've insisted on leaving in power knows that he has people working against him in his administration. That should work out great.
Then, we had a story also in the Times concerning Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and his alleged efforts to secretly record his conversations with Trump to gain material for possible 25th amendment proceedings. The timing of the story was pretty suspicious to me since it was concurrent with the first rumblings of the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, but also because of all the other legal developments I mentioned earlier. A story like this serves a perfect pretext to fire Rosenstein and, by extension, Mueller in a last-ditch effort to end the investigation that is clearly closing in around Trump and his family.
On the other hand, it's also hard to believe that the story was planted by people working on Trump's behalf as anonymous sources who could corroborate the tip to the Times reporters when they came calling. For one thing, this requires more sophisticated media relations than Trump or anyone in his administration has ever proven capable of. It also shows a remarkable amount of planning and strategy that he's never once demonstrated in any aspect of his life, ever. I imagine if Trump did plant this story he'd have done so by calling up the Times himself pretending to be somebody else saying that this Rosenstein fella tried to spy on the great, fantastic really, President Donald Trump.
Since the Times doesn't mention a detail like that, I'm resigned to taking the story at face value. Which, is really embarrassing for Rosenstein, because the story the Times tells is of a man who is hopelessly out of his depth. He seems legitimately blindsided by the fact that Trump used his memo criticizing James Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton investigation as the basis (however short-lived) for Trump's firing of Comey. I honestly can't think of what other the purpose Rosenstein thought the memo had other than providing a pretext to fire Comey and derail the Russia investigation, but, he apparently had one in mind.
From there it presents a man who spirals out of panic, proposing to wear a wire himself in his meetings with the President or by getting the men Trump was interviewing to replace Comey to wear one instead. No one in the administration appears to have gone along with this plan because it's an obviously a bonkers and haphazard one, and things seemed to just fade away into the background until now. Rosenstein still has a job, although for how long seems to be an open question and one that likely won't be answered until the Kavanaugh confirmation is done.
Which brings us to the latest open sore the Trump administration has inflicted on us. I'll make this clear up front, Brett Kavanaugh has no business being a Supreme Court Judge. His entire judicial career has been one where he was groomed to move up through the judicial ranks so he could rewrite the law to fit right wing partisan goals. That's it. The law is irrelevant beyond providing a pretext for Kavanaugh to reshape it to make this country a better place for the already rich and powerful while they crush everyone else under heel. If you're wondering why he immediately started raving about how these allegations where the by-product of an extensive outside money campaign undertaken by people looking to revenge the Clintons well, it's because that's exactly the kind of thing he's been involved in from the very start.
So, what to make of the assault accusations against him? Personally, I believe them for a couple reasons. First is the well documented fact that false rape accusations are incredibly rare and, more importantly, all Kavanaugh has to defend himself is his word and his word is, objectively, shit. Common Dreams has a good breakdown of all the things Kavanaugh has lied about over the years, but I just want to go over some highlights. In 2002, Kavanaugh received documents stolen from Democrats on the Senate Judicial Committee that outlined lines of questioning the members planned to use in upcoming confirmation hearings at the time. Kavanaugh said he never received or saw the documents in a 2004 hearing regarding the issue and in 2006 when at his confirmation hearing to the appellate courts but proof that he received the documents came out earlier this month, so whoops. Another incident involved Kavanaugh saying he had no knowledge of the Bush administrations wiretapping program except again an email turned up where he was asking John Yoo about that very subject. Lastly, Kavanaugh denies ever taking a position on whether or not presidents could ever be prosecuted for crimes or not which would be true except for all the times he did just that.
In short, on the one hand we have a man who's spent at least the last fourteen years lying to members of Congress under oath about issues that could complicate his career path and on the other we have three women with no equivalent evidence for dishonesty. That's not really a toss up in the credibility game. That hasn't stopped people from trying, though, and since the efforts have largely been focused around Dr. Christine Ford, that's what we'll work with too. The main talking point around Ford's accusation is that it can't be true because she waited so long to report it, that if she had really been assaulted she would've reported it at the time but since she didn't, her claims is obviously dubious. What I love about this line of defense is that ignores all the death threats, the public accusations of being called a liar, having your entire life put under a microscope, plus just the general humiliation and trauma that comes with having your assault become common knowledge to millions of strangers all over the country. But sure, the only reason she could have for not coming forward publicly is just because it never happened.
The other usual "reasonable" point people wanting to cast doubt on Ford's claim is that she's coming forward just now. What drives me nuts about this is that line of reasoning is that it acts like there's no larger context the accusation is happening in. Kavanaugh is being considered for a seat on the Supreme Court which sets him up as one of the most powerful people in the country. It also makes him virtually untouchable, in the entire history of the United States, only one Justice has ever been impeached. So you're telling me if the man who tried to rape you was about to become one of the most powerful and unassailable men in the country, you'd keep quiet about it? You wouldn't feel compelled to share that information, to give a fuller scope of the person who's going to shape the country with every decision he makes for decades on end? Under that context, is it really so surprising that Ford and the others would come out with their allegations when there's still a slim chance those accusations will actually matter?
Not surprisingly, the accusations haven't made any dent in Republican will to see Kavanaugh confirmed. The week-long investigation the FBI is going to launch will likely be inconclusive, so people like Jeff Flake and red-state Democrats like Joe Manchin can have something to point to as cover when they vote to confirm Kavanaugh to the bench. If nothing else, the last week has given people a real time example of what rape culture looks like and how it functions. You see, a key aspect of rape culture is scrutinizing the victims actions while dismissing or excusing the perpetrator's. From Tucker Carlson asking whether Ford failed in her obligation to tell the world that Kavanaugh was a rapist to the evolving defense of Kavanaugh's behavior going from "he didn't do it, he may have did it but it's outside the statute of limitations, okay he did do it but who hasn't violently held down a woman and tried to fuck her?" you can see a dedicated effort to make the conversation about how since Ford and the other accusers didn't behave like "real" victims, than they obviously can't be. Any attempt to bring the conversation back to Kavanaugh's actions- the actual relevant topic here- is met with the kind of dismissal this woman provides such a great example of. There's also Lindsey Graham lamenting that these accusations will ruin Kavanaugh's life if they prevent him from being confirmed which, yeah, speaks for itself.
I've seen some things about how the confirmation hearings will have negative effects for the Republicans going forward because women will take note of Dr. Ford's treatment etc. etc. I highly doubt that anyone is losing sleep over that possibility. Republican presidential candidates have won the white women vote in every election since at least 2004, which is unlikely to change anytime soon. The most likely groups of women to look in disgust at the Kavanaugh hearings are women of color, but since they don't vote for Republicans anyway in very great numbers and they're part of groups that state Republican parties actively disenfranchise through laws and gerrymandering efforts likely to survive legal challenges with Kavanaugh and Gorsuch as sitting members on the bench so this is really a situation where Republicans don't lose anything at all.
What I think is the most revealing aspect of this whole drama though is that it was never supposed to happen at all. Dianne Feinstein received Ford's letter in July and then did nothing with it. She refused to tell the other Democrats on the committee of the letters existence until news stories about its existence were printed earlier this month. The reason Feinstein gave is that she thought the Democrats would have better chance attacking Kavanaugh on legal ground instead of personal controversies. Sounds reasonable, but doubtful when you take into consideration that she also ignored a lawyer representing people who would testify about Kavanaugh's conduct as a judge over his career. This makes me think that the plan was to let the nomination go through relatively uncontested to protect red state Democrats like Joe Manchin (WV), Heidi Heitkamp (N. D), and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) while letting other members like Kamala Harris and Cory Booker have flashy but ultimately irrelevant moments for them to stump on in the primaries next year.
A big part of why I believe this is because at the end of August right before the Kavanaugh hearings started, Chuck Schumer struck a deal with Mitch McConnell to fast track the confirmation of 15 Trump appointees in exchange for a paltry number of Obama holdovers explicitly so those same Senators mentioned above could have better reelection chances in the upcoming midterms. The timing of that deal combined with the fact that Feinstein sat on the assault allegations and other damning material on Kavanaugh draw a clear picture to me that Democrats were pulling their usual game of playing for penny-ante political gains in the face of Republican power moves. It's amazing to me in this day and age that the Democratic leadership is willing to trade away lifetime appointments for people who will actively work to undermine any sense of equality the law has provided in the last 50 years for the chance to stay in the Senate for another six years. Honestly, on policy, they aren't as bad as Republicans, but is it really worth the trade-off of them being politically useless? (Oh, right, Tom Perez said the DNC would still campaign and protect Senators who vote yes on Kavanaugh. Because fuck your base and their principles, right?)
In milestone news, this month also marked the 10th anniversary of the Bear Sterns failing and the financial crisis that failing triggered. The main things I want to reinforce about this is that the response to the crisis and its aftermath is, in my opinion, the biggest failure of Obama's presidency. The crisis was the result of years of Wall Street's fraudulent activity via their sub-prime loans. TO recap, the sub-prime loans where loans banks and other mortgage firms like Country Wide made to pretty anyone with a pulse, often falsifying the loan recipients personal information to make it look better on paper. They then bundled these things together and sold them off to pensions, retirement funds, hedge funds, whoever they could find, so that when the loans started going bad and failed, their customers would eat the loss instead of themselves. This went round and round until the music stopped, the banks couldn't unload the loans fast enough, then credit everywhere froze at which point things went haywire and governments got involved and you know the rest. Point is, the crash wasn't the result of things just going badly, it came about after systemic economic frauds couldn't find any more suckers to feed of off.
As I've said many a time before, the Obama's response to the blatant criminal activity was to let the entire industry off scot-free and let them walk off into the sunset, intact, with no repercussions whatsoever. His stimulus plan was also a weak half-measure that only promised that whatever recovery we had would be slow, stagnant, and wouldn't actually allow people to recoup what they lost in the first place. Which, if you haven't noticed, is the economy we have now. This stagnation, with its pitiful to non-existent wage growth, to seeing the people who wrecked the world get richer than they were before made people desperate for a candidate who was unconventional, who would buck the system, who didn't seem to play the standard Washington game.
Obama will usually defend his performance by saying that politics is an air carrier that can only change course in subtle, discreet ways, and can't make any radical changes in direction too quickly. Which, in normal times, is true. However when the world is burning down around you people will often give you leeway to radically change the game. In fact, that's what people were hoping Obama would do. Instead, he passed on the opportunity, following his near dogmatic belief in reasonableness no matter the circumstance. Say what you will about Obama has a person, but as a president his failure/refusal to take bold action when it was needed the most hamstrung us into the conditions that would make Donald Trump. That failure should hang around his legacy like a millstone, but it probably never will.
For news on the American Reich front, we found out this month that the Trump administration moved $10 million from FEMA and $260 million in cancer and HIV/AIDS research among other programs over to ICE to help cover the costs of the detaining the nearly 13,000 children still in federal custody. The other fun part is that the administration also proposed changing the licencing of detention facilities from the states to the Department of Homeland Security. The reason for this is so the administration can avoid a legal settlement that only allows them to detain children for 20 days and they can proceed to hold them indefinitely like they do to their parents. Like I said before, this is barbaric cruelty as policy, nothing more. There's no ethical or moral defense for a system that intentionally causes mental and emotional trauma for the children or where the agents responsible for their care starve, beat, and rape them. The rule change, like all federal rules changes, is subject to a 60-day open comment period and is also open to legal challenges. The comments don't have any kind of binding power, and a legal challenge is somewhat doomed by the fact that it will end up in front of a stacked 5-4 court who will in all likelihood rubber stamp whatever flimsy national security reasoning the administration uses to justify the policy change.
Moving on to good news/bad news, the Trump administration admitted climate change exists. In a July report from the National Highway Safety Administration, the agency says that they believe there will be a 7 degree Fahrenheit increase in global temperatures by 2100. Bad news comes in when the same agency says we should do nothing to stop this. To put things in context, the last time global temperatures increased by that amount it resulted in something known as the Permian-Triassic extinction event a.k.a. The Great Dying a.k.a the worst mass extinction in Earth's history. The Trump's administration's argument is that the rise in temperatures is so catastrophic that any measures to prevent it- in this case maintaining higher fuel standards- are essentially pointless so we shouldn't do them at all.
This is, in blunt terms, suicidal policy. During the Permian-Triassic, temperatures rose 10 degrees Fahrenheit, so for the Trump administration to just wave off a temperature increase that puts us in the range of the largest extinction event in our planet's history is just, well, I don't have really have another word except suicidal and I already used it. But think about it, within the span of one average human lifetime, the climate of the Earth could change to the point where it becomes too hot for us to survive and then we'll all be gone. And this administration's response to that is "Eh, who gives a fuck anyway?"
There's something in physics called the Fermi Paradox which, in a nutshell, is trying to figure out in a universe as old as ours, with billions upon billions of stars and planets, where is everybody? Why haven't we run into any alien civilizations or, at least, the ruins of alien civilizations? It's a fascinating thing to think about with tons of hypothetical answers. One of my favorites is something called the Great Filter which posits that something in the development of life-whether it be abiogenesis, sexual reproduction, or ecological destruction- prevents intelligent life from developing to a point where it becomes capable of interstellar or intergalactic travel. Since we haven't encountered any other civilizations, that means there hasn't been one to survive the filter. The more I look at ours and see a dedicated effort to write off the extinction of our species to save car makers the hassle of making cars with lower emissions, the more that hypothesis seems credible and the less I think it will be any great tragedy if/when we do check ourselves out of existence.
To end on a good note, here's a video of Trump making himself the literal laughing stock of the entire world. Enjoy.
