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Category Archives: current events
Sickening, but important to focus and not look away. Stay vigilant and critical, friends.
If you read Mueller’s concise summary of Volume II, the section that details instance after instance of Trump’s colorable obstruction of justice (even as we watch Trump’s obstruction machine churning full-bore in real-time with ongoing cover-ups, flouting of legal process, distortions, reversals, spins, mood-swinging tweets on who will and won’t testify and presidential bluster about how he’ll obstruct any probe into obstruction all the way up to the Supreme Court) you already know what the more than 370 former federal prosecutors wrote in their letter published yesterday. [1]
They reach the same conclusion Mueller did, the same one pathetic, porcine Bill Barr deliberately mis-stated repeatedly, with calculated, clearly misleading nationally broadcast statements that have so confused so many Americans about the evidence the Mueller team found relating to the president’s long, ongoing pattern of obstruction.
Mueller himself protested Barr’s misleading pronouncements about the findings of his investigation and the confusion his misleading statements were sowing among Americans. He pointed this out, in a few hundred clear words, in a second letter to Barr (dated weeks before Barr released the lightly redacted summaries and the rest of the blacked out report).
The OBVIOUS CONCLUSION of Mueller’s investigation: but for the fact that the boastful, childish, litigious boor was the sitting president, he would have been immediately charged with numerous counts of obstruction of justice, backed by significant evidence of a pattern of illegal obstructive behavior. The report concludes that because of the large amount of evidence against the guilty-acting president, it could not exonerate him, even as Office of Legal Counsel policy speaks against indictment of a sitting president.
Of course, there’s always another side to any story. FOX, obviously, had another spin about who the actual democracy despising traitors are, where our withering ire should be directed. The fucking rat leaker who let anyone see Mueller’s private, confidential letter to the Attorney General.
Ken Starr, the righteous prosecutor who put salacious, pornographic details of sitting president Bill “Unlit Cigar” Clinton’s sex life on the internet for any twelve year-old to read (along with an unflattering physical description of the president’s erect penis), gave a good headline to the folks over at Fair and Balanced:
Ken Starr: Leak of Mueller’s ‘whiny’ letter to Barr was an ‘unforgivable sin’.
Among other asinine statements, Starr found the proper victim in all this:
“Here comes Bob Mueller with this letter which is then leaked. That is, to me, the unforgivable sin. He, Bob Mueller, badly injured this attorney general and the attorney general didn’t deserve that but, of course, that created its own huge firestorm including suggestions that the attorney general was totally mischaracterizing the report and so forth,” Starr said.
read all about it
The pathetic porcine puppet, Mr. Barr, testilying with expert evasiveness in front of a Republican-chaired Senate committee (as to the Democratic House committee, shove your fucking partisan subpoenas up your asses, losers), dismissed Mueller’s letter as “snitty” (a pretty fucking snitty thing to say about a polite, formal letter on a matter of pressing national interest, I thought) written, Barr breezily surmised, by “someone on Mueller’s staff”. (In spite of the inconvenient facts that it’s plainly signed “Sincerely yours, Robert S. Mueller, III” and that the prose style is clearly Mueller’s).
Spun another way, toward the plain statements of fact contained in the letter– Mueller’s concise letter is a gripping piece of evidence. It was submitted to Barr to become part of a record preserving the rest of the redacted, hidden evidence of Trump’s eternal campaign to redact and hide his most indefensibly sociopathic actions. The very actions that Barr deliberately mislead Americans about by spinning the conclusions and refusing to release the fully redacted summary Mueller himself had already provided to Barr.
It emerged, as a result of the Mueller team’s single leak, that Barr was in receipt of Mueller’s letter on March 28, even as he deliberately, and repeatedly, oversimplified and misstated the findings, substance and conclusions of the report in the weeks before he belatedly released what he could have released (the summary) immediately. Certainly would have created less deliberate confusion than his bullshit four page abstract which gave the glaringly false impression, repeated over and over in the Trump echo-chamber, that the president had been exonerated and cleared of all wrong-doing in a, nonetheless, partisan witch hunt.
I am an optimist by nature, I suppose. Dark as the times are now, when Nazis and klansman are defended by our narrow-minded, “transactional”, blowhard president as “very fine people”, it is no time for despair. It is worth remembering (as a NY Times editorial opined about the basic “sobriety” and “rationality” of the German people on the eve of Hitler’s election in 1933) the collective We have an impulse toward justice that cannot always be denied. As evidence and public testimony mounts, more and more people begin to realize that all these witnesses can’t be lying under oath merely to unfairly bring down a completely innocent man aggressively defended by an army of wildly spinning lawyers.
At the risk of seeming partisan, in these hideously partisan times, I have to quote the great George Lopez, as to our ethically challenged gangster wanna-be president– “fuck that puto“.
[1] The number of signatories went up to 459 former federal prosecutors and judges, as of yesterday, as dozens of other former prosecutors, from across the political spectrum, continue to sign on to the on-line letter. source
No mercy for the OTHER
All that is necessary, to carry out any otherwise unthinkably cruel policy, is to make people believe that the people hurt by the policy are not like us, they are the OTHER, a completely different kind of being than us, totally guilty and deserving of what is being done to them.
This is not news, of course. It has been done countless times in history, in fact, any time an army is sent to kill its enemies, the best practice is to make the soldiers also hate their enemies’ families, children and pets.
That baby we’re taking out of her mother’s arms at the U.S. southern border? An infant rapist, an illegal, genetic inferior who will grow up to bring illegal drugs in, to murder, to terrorize innocent Americans, someone who already, in their little baby heart, deeply hates our freedom. A disgusting animal that breeds like a cockroach. That baby is NOTHING LIKE US, nor are her parents or anyone she knows anything like us. She is an illegal alien, not a tiny person like any other baby we know, nor is it anyone’s concern that she might be traumatized for life by a deliberately vicious policy calculated to terrify and deter her parents.
She gets what she fucking deserves!
Everybody who is whipped into a rage by the idea of an invasion of raping, drug smuggling cockroaches who are overrunning us can see that.
Only in this way, by dehumanizing desperate strangers as OTHER, can you drop bombs on people who never did you any harm or posed the slightest threat. You can say that such “collateral damage” [1], sadly, is the price for imposing freedom on these oppressed people and that if these savages can’t see that it’s worth a few of them dying so the rest can have American-style democracy, well, I rest my case.
Hitler did this in Germany when he stuck his toe into mass murder. His first test of the public’s willingness to tolerate mass killing was ending lebensunwertes leben,[2] “lives unworthy of living.” The first of these lives unworthy of living were children in mental hospitals, incurable “useless eaters”. This is how you do it. Start small, with the subhuman kids of subhumans. (Although the citizens of Nazi Germany eventually put an end to this hideous practice by their united disapproval of the program). Never mind, by then the Leader was on to wiping out the real Enemies of the People, Jews, Communists, Gypsies, Homosexuals, critical journalists and so on.
If you do this dehumanizing loudly and persistently enough, you can drown out almost everything else. A lynch mob is not worried about their own poverty, the hopeless situation of their own lives, not when they are gleefully torturing somebody to death and the enthusiastic crowd is cheering them on. A little bit of that violence goes a long way to making them feel powerful, at least while they’re exacting vengeance on a hated OTHER, cheering it.
I mention this because this shabby technique is really all President Fuckface has. Every move he makes is a variation on this basic theme of stirring hatred and playing to the worst impulses of his followers. He vilifies, he attacks, he publicly praises an ass-kisser until that ass-kisser no longer puckers up, then the guy has “flipped” (there should be a law against that, POTUS opines) and become a “rat”.
A “rat” by the way is a former crime associate who gives truthful evidence against his lying criminal boss to avoid a long prison sentence for himself.
Rats are not like you and me, as every criminal boss, every bully, knows. We are stand up guys who say nothing and do the prison time to protect our honor as stand up guys. Got that, knucklehead?
Bill Barr [3], for example, having passed his audition to get back into power by repeatedly and shamelessly puckering up for Mr. Trump [4], has got only one answer for the charge that he is a pathetic, traitorous sell-out: I know you are but what am I? [5] If he’s finally pressed enough, and retreats from that arrogant yet sycophantic posture, he will be, and you can see this coming: a fucking rat! Like Mueller and the rest of those disloyal Commie bastards!
Also, the slanderous charge that Barr is an unprincipled Trump loyalist is belied by the fact below [6].
[1] The genius who coined this great euphemism for the sometimes accidental murder of innocent civilians was well-rewarded for this marvelously anodyne phrase I’m sure. There’s an other I would kick hard in the stomach, taking a momentary break from my pursuit of ahimsa, in an ideal world.
[2] psychiatrist/historian Robert Jay Lifton:
Of the five identifiable steps by which the Nazis carried out the principle of “life unworthy of life,” coercive sterilization was the first. There followed the killing of “impaired” children in hospitals; and then the killing of “impaired” adults, mostly collected from mental hospitals, in centers especially equipped with carbon monoxide gas. This project was extended (in the same killing centers) to “impaired” inmates of concentration and extermination camps and, finally, to mass killings in the extermination camps themselves.[1]
[3] from FOX news:
The second of four sons, William Pelham Barr grew up on New York’s Upper West Side. His father became headmaster at Dalton, the elite New York prep school, where his college-educated mother taught English to foreign students. Barr’s values were ingrained early in life—conservative politics and Catholicism—and have never wavered. At Corpus Christi, his Roman Catholic elementary school, he supported Richard Nixon. (A nun took him aside and promised to pray for him.) Even in high school at Horace Mann, the most competitive nonsectarian (but largely Jewish) prep school in New York, Barr stood out. “He wanted to be respected as a conservative intellectual more than liked,” recalled Doug Schoen, the Democratic pollster and a fellow student there. “He made it known that he took his intellectual inspiration not from Allard Lowenstein, the Pied Piper of the anti-war movement, but William Buckley.” This predilection for early decisions applied to avocations as well. At age eight, Barr took up the bagpipes, and has since played competitively in Scotland and at family events.
When Barr headed the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 1989, he deemed legal the invasion of Panama and the arrest of longtime U.S. ally Manuel Noriega and argued that the Bush administration could arrest terrorists and drug traffickers overseas, even in violation of international law. As deputy attorney general in 1990, he advised that President Bush could legally wage war against Iraq, without Congress’s approval, though he encouraged Bush to seek a congressional resolution of support to strengthen his political position. Barr is therefore likely to support the issuing of presidential pardons to loyalists. Long a champion of tough-on-crime policies and of tighter immigration controls, he is also likely to embrace former attorney general Jeff Sessions’s agenda on both, perhaps even including the legality of separating parents from children at the U.S. southern border.
[5] Barr will always have partisan defenders, like this staunch believer in the virtually unlimited powers of the Unitary Executive (this bitch was a primary author of the secret Torture Memo). Here is the lifelong fascistic asskisser’s approving view of Barr’s shameful performance as A.G.
Nothing to see here! I know you are, but what am I?
[6] Lying Washington Post:
The White House official noted that Barr’s contribution to Trump was paltry compared with the $55,000 Barr gave to a political action committee that supported Jeb Bush, one of Trump’s rivals during the primaries.
Barr and his wife also gave $27,600 in 2008 to Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the House Judiciary Committee chairman who has led an investigation into the Justice Department’s handling of the Russia probe. Goodlatte issued a statement last week calling Barr “a great choice.” One of Barr’s daughters works as an aide for the Judiciary Committee.
Barr also donated more than $33,000 to Republicans in Congress, including Rep. Barbara Comstock in Virginia and Sen. Tom Cotton in Arkansas.
Public Service
I take back any disparaging thing I’ve said about Robert Mueller III in the last few days (particularly “fucking eagle scout”). Here is the letter he wrote to William Barr, a pathetic porcine puppet for a puerile president [1] MORE THAN A MONTH AGO! How much bullshit would America have been spared, if AG Barr, pathetic porcine puppet that he is, had heeded Mueller’s concise letter instead of concealing it and continuing to knowingly lie to the American people.
In this letter Mueller lays out the law to a corrupt supervisor placed in the job based on a shameless audition and his stated and reiterated promise to POTUS to support him no matter what, to obstruct, mislead, mischaracterize, posit ridiculous shit, stonewall, obfuscate, spread deliberate misinformation, claim to be starting investigations based on Trump’s fantasy about being spied on by a man so far superior to him he could not have been born in America, no way, anything no matter how debasing, to protect the president at all costs, including integrity and common decency.
A small price to pay for power and the further chance to advance a wildly unpopular political agenda.
Barr’s smug asshole response today about this letter, which was sent by Mueller to make a record of his attempt to immediately correct misstatements Barr had made and offered him a fully redacted summary of the findings, was that Mueller should have simply called him on the phone instead of having “an assistant” write this troublesome, unnecessary letter that was, rightfully, shielded from public view for more than a month while Barr continued to make a long, baseless informercial for his boss, the American People, errrr, Donald J. Trump.
Here you go. My hat is once again off to Robert Mueller, whose investigation did not leak at all, until it was absolutely necessary that it did, and then, just one crucial page, to preserve a bit more evidence. Beautifully done, Mr. Mueller::
[1] from a tweet by Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe
Of course, Mueller wrote explicitly about why he would not unequivocally opine on Trump’s likely guilt or innocence
The Devil, as they say, is always in the details. In bizarro Trumpworld, nothing is prohibited to the Boss unless there is proof of an actual crime BEYOND THE SHADOW OF ANY DOUBT. In the case of doubt, Trump wins. He’s staked his entire career on this principle of unaccountability, perfecting it as a young adult under the tutleage of satanic Roy Cohn.
Me standing over a dead body with a bloody knife in my hand, shirt and face spattered with blood matching the victim’s, is not proof I killed the butchered dead piece of shit (who deserved it in any case) — unless there were ten eye witnesses who all pass polygraphs. And even then…
Mueller lays out, in lawyerly detail, his reasoning for not indicting Trump for obstruction, or even opining more straight forwardly about the strength of a strong case against the president, in spite of what appears to be a clear, well-corroborated, largely public course of obstructive conduct. A seamless pattern of attempts by the “most transparent president” in history (also, man with, by far, the largest penis of any president) to thwart a legal investigation, in fact. The president’s contempt of the legal system could not be more “in your fucking face”.
Read the fine print of the Mueller report, where the devil cavorts. Mueller argues, in point three (below), that it would be unfair to indict the president for a serious, impeachable, crime and then have him wait, possibly years, to clear his good (or, in this case, bad) name in court. It would hurt the president’s credibility, unnecessarily compromise him and impose a serious political disability on him. According to Mueller, quoting the OLC opinion, the “stigma and opprobrium” [of being charged and having to wait years to clear his name in court] “could impair the president’s ability to govern.” So, no indictment. Not for a rip-snorting Republican electoral college winner, anyway. Fair is fair.
Read it and weep, boys and girls. Mueller, the fucking eagle scout:
I am starting to like the sound of the Democratic talking point when asked about impeachment: “we’re not there yet.” Meaning, we the American electorate, and the fifteen or so Republican senators needed to convict in the Senate, are not yet faced with overwhelming, incontrovertible proof of this cruel, stubborn, vain president’s guilt.
That he is guilty as hell, and keeps doubling down on his guilt by adding obstructive acts to his obstruction in progress, there is no doubt in my mind. But I’m not the one who needs to be convinced.
It’s a good argument for the American people (the ones, in the end, who need to be convinced): “the motherfucker left us with no choice but to actually drag his dirty ass into the only court available for prosecuting such a powerful, untruthful and eternally unaccountable man.” Contempt of Congress?
Fucking prove it, you contemptible, powerless, loser assholes! Make me! Make me, bitches!!!
Thanks to The Intercept, who put the entire redacted Mueller report on-line. James Risen and others have annotated it here.
What Mueller should have added to his summary
The following short passage added to Mueller’s carefully worded report on his investigation into the Trump campaign’s coordination with Russia in the 2016 election would have completely changed the topography of the political discussion, and, frankly, cut through a lot of fucking bullshit to directly defend our democracy:
While I have abided by the opinions of the DOJ memos stating that a sitting president cannot be indicted, and have therefore refrained from making a traditional prosecutorial judgment in this report, I am making my findings clear and explicit to avoid any confusion about my conclusions. I underscore what I have found because I am aware that any ambiguity in this report will be weaponized by partisans on both sides of the political divide regarding the president and his actions.
I therefore clarify the findings of my report as the only way, consistent with the constitution, in our present highly partisan political moment, to hold a colorably corrupt president to account for possibly abusing the powers of the office. I wish to remove any ambiguity about the meaning of a passage like the following (which does not draw any conclusion about guilt or innocence):
The president and his personal counsel made repeated statements suggesting that a pardon was a possibility for [Paul] Manafort, while also making it clear that the president did not want Manafort to “flip” and cooperate with the government.
There are many triable issues of fact raised in my report. Had the acts detailed here been committed by someone other than the president of the United States, I would not hesitate to recommend prosecution. I have, in fact, indicted and prosecuted several people closely associated with the president whose related misdeeds and lying under oath were uncovered in the course of this investigation.
Investigation of the Trump campaign’s coordination with the Russian Federation was hampered, and in some cases thwarted, by witnesses who lied and important parties who refused to be interviewed, or answer written questions with candor, including, significantly, the president and his son, Donald Junior. Therefore, I could make no concrete determination regarding criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
On the matter of the long course of obstruction of this investigation by the president and his associates, there is far more evidence and less ambiguity.
While DOJ policy is against indictment of a sitting president, based on the evidence of consistent efforts to obstruct my investigation, I recommend the indictment of Donald J. Trump, for an ongoing pattern of obstruction of justice [1], with prosecution to be deferred until after his term in office.
The evidence my committee uncovered, as I have stated, clearly does not exonerate the president. Neither should any American be found guilty of crimes without a trial by a jury of his peers. The many triable issues of fact my investigation uncovered make that trial a necessity if we are to adhere to the principle that no person is above the law.
(thanks to Bill Maher for putting the idea in my head that Mueller exacerbated the crisis, by his meticulous, lawyerly finding that… let the Republican-controlled Senate decide whether their master is guilty … and to Lawrence O’Donnell for the deferred prosecution idea.)
[1] The third article of impeachment drafted for Nixon related to his contempt of Congress, based on his defiance of subpoenas and refusal to produce documents and other evidence. Article III, when it was announced, reportedly made Nixon cry (and possibly say “this is the end of my presidency, I’m fucked”). It read in part that the president:
failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives on April 11, 1974, May 15, 1974, May 30, 1974, and June 24, 1974, and willfully disobeyed such subpoenas. source
| Article III: Contempt of Congress | Passed 21–17 | Democrats: 19 yes, 2 no
Republicans: 2 yes, 15 no |
The only constitutional remedy for holding a corrupt elected official to account
I don’t understand what is hard about this. Even for spineless Democrats strategizing about how to defeat the worst president in American history in a year and a half. As that president uses his powers to try to run out the clock prior to the climactic final phase of his four year re-election campaign.
Mueller stated at the outset of his summary that he was bound by the current DOJ policy about not indicting a sitting president. He declared that for this reason he would not make a traditional prosecutorial judgment about indicting the president for anything.
The purpose of his investigation, he states, was to uncover facts, compile and preserve evidence, compel testimony, indict anyone involved in illegal activity who was not covered by the DOJ policy regarding the sitting president. Several of Trump’s close associates have already been indicted, a few convicted, a couple are already serving prison sentences. Or, as William Barr continues to say: nothing to see here.
Robert Mueller detailed many specific instances of the president acting with corrupt intent, ordering subordinates to lie about matters of national importance (as Trump’s new attorney general has been doing recently about Mueller’s report, about Obama’s “spying”, about Mueller “acknowledging” that the president was “frustrated and angry” and so on), sometimes to commit illegal acts, other times only unethical ones, consistently obstructing a legal investigation into his corrupt dealings as they related to Russia and the effect Russian interference had on the outcome of the 2016 election.
Mueller (who was not looking to indict the president in any case) did not find enough evidence of criminal coordination with Russia to support a criminal charge of conspiracy between Trump and Russia, though he provided a trove of evidence to show the many instances of “collusion” or “coordination” we all know about. Not enough to support a criminal charge of conspiracy, a very high bar, but plenty to show a clear pattern of working together for a common goal, using not always legal means.
Mueller’s report on Trump’s many attempts to obstruct justice, on the other hand, contains far less ambiguity. Trump is still, as I tap away here, actively and publicly attempting to obstruct justice. He’s recently done the only thing he knows how to do, double down and fight, vowing to obstruct any further attempts to investigate him all the way up to a Supreme Court he imagines will take his side.
Trump claims, nonsensically, that the Mueller report totally exonerated him (it explicitly did not) and that it was, at the same time, a partisan hit job by the same powerful liars that falsely attacked Boof Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings.
It is time to impeach Donald Trump and put him on trial in the Senate. Mueller’s report makes this clear.
Trump’s behavior since the report was belatedly made (mostly) public makes it even clearer. The redacted report Barr released has all twelve (or is it 14?) related criminal referrals completely blacked out, including the names of the subjects of those referrals. Is Ivanka named? Jared? Don Jr.? Only Barr, Mueller and the White House know.
Meanwhile, “the most transparent president in history” vows to fight to keep everything secret, including his financial information, especially that. There may be a federal financial disclosure law he is ordering Steve Mnuchin to violate, but, here too, Mr. Trump has vowed to fight all the way to the Supreme Court.
One fact does not need proof– Trump, when threatened by the law, lawyers up as he has in literally thousands of lawsuits. Let his lawyers defend him in the Senate.
Mueller presented ample evidence of the president’s ongoing attempts to obstruct any investigation of Trump’s often shady, sometimes illegal, activities. Then Mueller wrote, directly before the line that said CONCLUSION:
I have been practicing my cursive writing (if not my photography) with this excellent little sentence, dipping a nib in ink and inscribing it on the back of the letters I am writing these days:
The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of the office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.
Could Robert Mueller have been more clear? The exercise of the president’s legitimate duties under Article II, Mueller reminds us, may not be unduly questioned by the other branches of government. In contrast, the constitution offers no such exemption for the corrupt exercise, the misuse and abuse, of the considerable powers of the presidency. It is the clear duty of Congress to rein in a corrupt president. As Mueller also wrote:
With respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.
Yet Democrats still waver. What about the optics? It hurt the Republicans when they tried to impeach Clinton over lying about a blow job and his efforts to cover up that affair becoming public [1]. Let’s defeat Trump on the issues, this election is about values, not Trump. Let’s not look like partisans! We don’t have the votes in the Senate… the Republicans will make us look bad…
Shut up and do your constitutional duty. Listen to Elizabeth Warren, she’s right. This is about defending the rule of law in a democracy, not politics (repulsive as Trump’s policies and politics are).
The Democratic fear is based on the backlash Republicans experienced after the Clinton impeachment failed. Let’s not forget that in 1999 50 (fifty) of those Republican partisans who were in the Senate for the impeachment trial (fucking Mitch McConnell voting ‘guilty’ on both counts, as did Jeff Sessions, Strom Thurmond and 47 other outraged patriots) voted to convict Clinton and remove him from office. FIFTY. Over lying about a blow job. [2]
I urge all Americans to read Mueller’s executive summary of obstruction of justice, Volume II, then call your elected officials, Democratic and Republican alike, and ask them why they are not moving toward impeachment to rein in this corrupt abuser of power, and of everything else.
NOTES
[1] Wikipedia:
The trial in the United States Senate began right after the seating of the 106th Congress, in which the Republican Party held 55 Senate seats. A two-thirds vote (67 senators) was required to remove Clinton from office. Fifty senators voted to remove Clinton on the obstruction of justice charge and 45 voted to remove him on the perjury charge; no member of his ownDemocratic Party voted guilty on either charge. Clinton, like Johnson a century earlier, was acquitted on all charges.
[2] more shameful shit from the Clinton impeachment:
A much-quoted statement from Clinton’s grand jury testimony showed him questioning the precise use of the word “is”. Contending that his statement that “there’s nothing going on between us” had been truthful because he had no ongoing relationship with Lewinsky at the time he was questioned, Clinton said, “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the—if he—if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement”.[7] Starr obtained further evidence of inappropriate behavior by seizing the computer hard drive and email records of Monica Lewinsky. Based on the president’s conflicting testimony, Starr concluded that Clinton had committed perjury. Starr submitted his findings to Congress in a lengthy document (the so-called Starr Report), and simultaneously posted the report, which included descriptions of encounters between Clinton and Lewinsky, on the Internet.[8] Starr was criticized by Democrats for spending $70 million on an investigation that substantiated only perjury and obstruction of justice.[9] Critics of Starr also contend that his investigation was highly politicized because it regularly leaked tidbits of information to the press in violation of legal ethics, and because his report included lengthy descriptions which were humiliating yet irrelevant to the legal case.[10][11]
Nothing is Obscene– if this isn’t
If your lowest paid worker has to work for 68 years, or a total of 591,412 hours, to make what you earn in one hour, motherfucker, that is obscene.
If you already have more money than you and your spawn could spend in 1,000 years, (even if you all wipe your asses with hundred dollar bills every day and light $100 cigars with burning $100 bills), and you defend your absolute right to have more than that, that is obscene.
If you live in the richest country in the world, paying a lower tax rate than your secretary, and that country has a rate of infant and maternal mortality as high as many “shithole” countries, that, motherfucker, is obscene.
I could go on, but you get the point. I am just one irrationally angry, judgmental, ill-born loser bastard venting into the cold wind of Cyberia.
Abigail Disney, (inheritor of around a half a billion from the Disney estate), is a brilliant and accomplished woman, a social activist and a respected documentary filmmaker. Who knew? I hadn’t heard of her until the other day, when she got some press for writing an op-ed in the Washington Post, following a series of tweets that apparently blew up social media. It was a good op-ed, you can read it here. [1]
She writes, in part:
I had to speak out about the naked indecency of chief executive Robert Iger’s pay. According to Equilar, Iger took home more than $65 million in 2018. That’s 1,424 times the median pay of a Disney worker. To put that gap in context, in 1978, the average CEO made about 30 times a typical worker’s salary. Since 1978, CEO pay has grown by 937 percent, while the pay of an average worker grew just 11.2 percent.
This growth in inequality has affected every corner of American life. We are increasingly a lopsided, barbell nation, where the middle class is shrinking, a very few, very affluent people own a great deal and the majority have relatively little. What is more, as their wealth has grown, the super-rich have invested heavily in politicians, policies and social messaging to pad their already grotesque advantages.
She excoriates Disney corporation (in her personal capacity as a human, only) for paying its CEO $65,000,000 last year while giving each of its regular employees a generous $1,000 bonus for the bounteously profitable year they all had over at Disney.
Once again, Ms. Disney points out that in 1978 average CEO pay was 30X the median income of the worker in the corporation. That has since exploded, to something like 500X (you’ll have to read her op-ed for the exact number, I ain’t turning off ad blocker for Mr. Bezos or anyone else). Again, the typical American CEO has seen their compensation increase by 937% since 1978, workers 11.2%. Fair is fair.
The CEO/worker income disparity is much less grotesque in Japan and most other places, Ms. Disney points out. America, land of the free and home of the insatiably greedy (and entitled to be as obscenely greedy as they wanna be).
Abby Disney set off a shit storm when she stated, in a tweet she wrote prior to her op-ed, “there is nobody on Earth [who is] worth 500 times his median workers’ pay.”[24] It’s hard to disagree with that statement.
Although, one realizes after looking around just a bit, that 500 times is, by current American standards, a modest differential. The CEO of Disney that Abby Disney complains of made almost three times 500 times more.
Of course, there’s also the absurd touch of Abby Disney’s crie de coeur of an op-ed being published in a prestigious newspaper owned by a man who makes more than 500,000 times what his lowest paid workers do.
I have been shocked at the lack of shock with which the hideous tidbit about Bezos making $191,000 a minute while paying workers $15 an hour has been greeted by everyone I know. They yawn, resigned, horrified that I am once again bringing it up. Yeah, it sucks, they eventually agree (to get me talking about something else) but what can you do?
“But he makes 591,412 times what his lowest paid worker makes,” I say. They nod, yes, it’s fucking terrible, awful, where do you want to go for dinner Saturday?
Personally, I haven’t been able to get over the computations made by those rabid communist America-haters over at Business Insider about the income of Amazon genius (and Washington Post owner) Jeff Bezos. Jeff’s income, broken down by the hour, comes to a shade under $9,000,000 — $8,961,187 an hour. That comes out to $191,000 per minute for a man who does not allow his workers to unionize but voluntarily pays them the proposed federal minimum wage of $15 an hour. It is more than half a million times what his warehouse worker makes, 597,412 times. [2]
My friends, my enemies, if this situation is not obscene, the endless, bottomless greed that is currently raping the earth itself to death, and the moralistic defenders of the smug entitlement of these obscenely greedy, tax-dodging “job creating” parasites, what is obscene?
If the right to have 100,000 times more than you need, with no obligations to the society that made you so rich, (while neighbors are hungry and widespread despair drives an ever increasing number of American suicides,) is not an obscene thing to insist on, what is obscene?
Can you tell me that? Thanks, and have a nice day!
[1] I can’t presently read it myself, to quote from it directly, as I’d intended, because it is blocked by this message from the good bots at Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post who point out that it is unfair of me to freeload by both not paying for my twice a month visits to their site and also, selfishly blocking ads that are the very lifeblood of any profitable business.
The impulse to monetize EVERYTHING is the strongest impulse in our current unipolar, unapologetically capitalist world, apparently. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (read Shoshana Zuboff’s amazing book) we are living in is a new, ruthless, superficially benign, regime of a kind of all-encompassing inhuman commercial fascism. Hold on to your fucking hats, kids.
[2] This average salary is an interesting question. If you take the average of Jeff’s $8,961,187 hourly wage and an average line worker’s $15 an hour, the two workers average $4,480,601 hourly compensation. Nice money if you can get it.
A tranche of “nothing to see” in Mueller report
Robert Mueller, in the Volume II executive summary, after giving summaries of numerous shady dealings the president had with subordinates, using the power of his office, and his gigantic personality, to intimidate, pressure, attack, cajole, offer pardons, etc. (I offer but one example), writes this (emphasis mine):
Conduct involving Michael Cohen. The President’s conduct towards Michael Cohen, a former Trump Organization executive, changed from praise for Cohen when he falsely minimized the President’s involvement in the Trump Tower Moscow project, to castigation of Cohen when he became a cooperating witness. From September 2015 to June 2016, Cohen had pursued the Trump Tower Moscow project on behalf of the Trump Organization and had briefed candidate Trump on the project numerous times, including discussing whether Trump should travel to Russia to advance the deal. In 2017, Cohen provided false testimony to Congress about the project, including stating that he had only briefed Trump on the project three times and never discussed travel to Russia with him, in an effort to adhere to a “party line” that Cohen said was developed to minimize the President’s connections to Russia. While preparing for his congressional testimony, Cohen had extensive discussions with the President’s personal counsel, who, according to Cohen, said that Cohen should “stay on message” and not contradict the President. After the FBI searched Cohen’s home and office in April 2018, the President publicly asserted that Cohen would not “flip,” contacted him directly to tell him to “stay strong,” and privately passed messages of support to him. Cohen also discussed pardons with the President’s personal counsel and believed that if he stayed on message he would be taken care of. But after Cohen began cooperating with the government in the summer of 2018, the President publicly criticized him, called him a “rat,” and suggested that his family members had committed crimes.
Overarching factual issues. We did not make a traditional prosecution decision about these facts, but the evidence we obtained supports several general statements about the President’s conduct.
Several features of the conduct we investigated distinguish it from typical obstruction-of-justice cases. First, the investigation concerned the President, and some of his actions, such as firing the FBI director, involved facially lawful acts within his Article II authority, which raises constitutional issues discussed below. At the same time, the President’s position as the head of the Executive Branch provided him with unique and powerful means of influencing official proceedings, subordinate officers, and potential witnesses—all of which is relevant to a potential obstruction-of-justice analysis. Second, unlike cases in which a subject engages in obstruction of justice to cover up a crime, the evidence we obtained did not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference. Although the obstruction statutes do not require proof of such a crime, the absence of that evidence affects the analysis of the President’s intent and requires consideration of other possible motives for his conduct. Third, many of the President’s acts directed at witnesses, including discouragement of cooperation with the government and suggestions of possible future pardons, took place in public view. That circumstance is unusual, but no principle of law excludes public acts from the reach of the obstruction laws. If the likely effect of public acts is to influence witnesses or alter their testimony, the harm to the justice system’s integrity is the same.
Although the series of events we investigated involved discrete acts, the overall pattern of the President’s conduct towards the investigations can shed light on the nature of the President’s acts and the inferences that can be drawn about his intent. In particular, the actions we investigated can be divided into two phases, reflecting a possible shift in the President’s motives. The first phase covered the period from the President’s first interactions with Comey through the President’s firing of Comey. During that time, the President had been repeatedly told he was not personally under investigation. Soon after the firing of Comey and the appointment of the Special Counsel, however, the President became aware that his own conduct was being investigated in an obstruction-of-justice inquiry. At that point, the President engaged in a second phase of conduct, involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation. Judgments about the nature of the President’s motives during each phase would be informed by the totality of the evidence.
In other words, NOTHING TO SEE HERE!!!
Don’t go for the head fakes! Keep your eye on the ball.
We have the report right here, summarized by the investigator, in clear, easy to read prose. Read the summary of Volume II. It is not long, and is very lightly redacted (harm to ongoing matters– things still under investigation by other authorities). Then you will know exactly what Mueller found. He gives example after example of acts by the president that meet all the legal requirements for obstruction of justice: criminal intent, an obstructive act and a nexus to a proceeding.
You can read exactly what Mueller found, or go for the clumsy head fake of the pathetic, porcine puppet who lied and distorted the findings. Barr told America (and the world) that Trump had fully cooperated with the investigation and gave unfettered access to all requested materials. He said this even though Trump’s lawyers had him answer Mueller’s interrogatories with the standard “I don’t recall” 38 times in his written answers, refused to answer follow-up written questions, refused to be interviewed by Mueller, as if Trump had not made several attempts to fire Mueller, had not constantly attacked Mueller and the investigation and mocked it as a partisan witch hunt, continually. A small oversight by the pathetic porcine puppet, it appears, done, one supposes, to color the perception of the lazy American public, a public always willing to have confirmed for them what we already believe. This Mueller witch hunt report is the work of traitorous Commies trying to bring down the greatest president in American history!
Take a look at the fixed, uneasy expression on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s face, standing behind the pathetic porcine puppet as Trump’s loyal consigliere A.G. explains live on worldwide television why this damning report contains nothing to see here.
You can read the details, set out in black and white, and make your own decision about how damaging this is to Trump or wring your hands about the political optics of impeaching an openly corrupt president who projectile shits on every norm, and thrills a large number, a solid 39% of Americans, by doing so. It could hurt Democrats in 2020!! It could backfire, like the Clinton blow job impeachment did for Republicans in 1996!!! This impeachment is about defending the rule of law as it applies to a Unitary Executive, even one as infallible as our current POTUS.
The only thing to fear is this president not being held accountable for countless cruel, stupid and corrupt acts done with the powers of the most powerful office in the world. I am encouraged as momentum gathers among elected Democrats to hear what all the witnesses to the president’s attempts to obstruct justice have to say, to subpoena relevant documents, to press on with holding this never-accountable deadbeat winner accountable, finally. Even Speaker Pelosi, (I call her Nancy), has started to come around, saying now that impeachment is “on the table” if the facts lead us there.
I love what Elizabeth Warren had to say about impeachment. It is a matter of principle, beyond political calculation, if we are to defend our democratic tradition. Let the American people hear all the facts (like who is involved in the 12 criminal investigations Mueller handed off– every one of which has been redacted by the pathetic porcine puppet). Hold hearings, on television. Then let the Republicans, one after another, have to decide which way to vote, after hearing the overwhelming evidence of the president’s guilt.
In the face of mounting public sentiment that the case against the man has been shown conclusively, let them pretend he is still innocent. If they stand up and vote to acquit Trump, after making a political calculus, it will be a vote they will carry, like a scarlet letter, for the rest of their lives. Good for them!
