Bagpiper Bill– NEW LOW

This amazing guy, handsome Bagpiper Bill Barr, keeps topping himself.    He is a dangerous true believer, and very smart.  What he believes in, apparently, is the divinity and absolute moral authority of Jesus Christ and the absolute, unchallengeable power of the wealthiest Americans, particularly right-wing presidents.   He protects the Unitary Executive no matter what.

He did this for George H. W. Bush when Bush’s  involvement (denied by Bush for years) in the Iran Contra Scandal was about to be revealed during the trial of prodigious notetaker Caspar Weinberger.   Barr was spectacularly creative, crafting a pre-trial pardon for Weinberger that prevented the compromising notes from ever becoming public and closed the cover on the scandal forever.  He also orchestrated the pardons of everyone else who’d been caught in the scandal, to ensure that the lid was nailed shut.

He did this for Donald Trump when he first promised to protect him and then twisted the findings of Robert Mueller’s investigation into arguable (though counterfactual) complete and total exoneration.   He did this by arguing to America that any innocent man would be angry and frustrated, as Trump was, and would do whatever he was in his power to end the torment.   Another term for this doing of whatever is in your power to end what you perceive as persecution: obstruction of justice.

Bagpiper Bill indicated yesterday that he would recuse himself from the federal sex trafficking prosecution of longtime child sex impresario billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.  Epstein had a taste for young girls, 14, 15, 16, and he had the money and power to have a parade of them come to his mansions, disrobe, oil him up, with all that followed.  He did this countless times.   

Epstein was prosecuted by federal prosecutors in Florida, under then federal prosecutor Alex Acosta (Trump’s current Secretary of Labor) and, pursuant to a secret plea deal (negotiated by a legal “dream team” including Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr), pleaded guilty to a single prostitution charge and was allowed to work six days a week as long as he consented to spend nights, and Sundays, at a minimum security prison — for thirteen long months.   The original charges for the wealthy sexual predator carried about 40 years of prison time for the serious crimes Epstein was charged with.

Was the deal a scandalous miscarriage of justice?   Certainly.  Then there’s the inconvenient detail that the law requires prosecutors to inform victims before any deal with the perpetrator is signed– but Acosta didn’t inform anyone until the deal was done [1].    You know, Jeffry Epstein, whatever else he is, is a power broker, he’s not some random black kid smoking a joint on the street.  He hung out with Trump, Clinton, Alan Dershowitz and many other powerful and famous people.  He flew them places on his private jets and was apparently a generous host.

Federal prosecutors are now about to try Epstein again, on behalf of many other girls he had take off their clothes, oil his naked body up as he pleasured himself and felt them up.   The feds found piles of nude photos of these girls at his Manhattan mansion.   

Bagpiper Bill announced yesterday that since he had once worked at the law firm that defended Epstein in the prior sex trafficking case, he was recusing himself from supervising this federal prosecution.   

Barr had another conflict he didn’t mention, another appearance of impropriety — Barr’s father, while head of the elite Dalton School, had hired an under-qualified Epstein to teach high school math.

Today a spokesman for Bagpiper announced that Barr will not recuse himself from the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein after all.   This is presumably because during the years of boisterous girl chasing friendship between Trump and Epstein there may have been compromising photos taken of the two of them, with a couple of young beauties.  Or perhaps it is just protection against possible sworn testimony that Trump had simply enjoyed nude photos of the underage girls, taken home copies of his favorites.   You never know with Trump, anything, literally, could be true.   (We know Trump enjoyed, and bragged about, barging into the changing room for the Teenaged Miss America pageant he hosted).   

It is not worth taking chances, for Defender Barr– better to be present to decide exactly what evidence becomes part of the case, making sure to shield our Sexual Predator-in-Chief, the Unitary Executive, the living spokesman for Christ Himself, from any possible liability for anything.

Truly a shameful day, even for a law-toting blowhard as debased as Bagpiper Bill.

 

[1]   Alex Acosta addressed a room full of reporters and answered questions about the light slap on the wrist Epstein got in the non-prosecution deal Acosta oversaw.  He is by far the most impressive Trump appointee (not a very high bar, granted) and acquitted himself well at the news conference, even if he spent the entire time justifying himself as smoothly as you please.   

You’d be impressed, if you didn’t know he approved a tender, playful, secret slap on the wrist for the wealthy serial child abuser.  You’d think he was very candid in answering all questions.   Surprisingly intelligent, especially for a Trump administration official — although, it must be noted, he gave not a hint of an apology for his shameless secret deal with a serial child molester, nor more than a sniff of sympathy for the many young girls his well-connected friend literally screwed.

How to argue against putting innocent refugees in concentration camps

What to do when your government is criminalizing asylum seekers, brutalizing children, cramming them into unhealthy cages where disease proliferates as abuses by guards are ignored?   With, of course, a rotating cast of government officials that continues to lie about this brutal mistreatment of innocent “others”.   This, from today’s Democracy Now! broadcast:

In Washington, D.C., 18 Jewish activists with the group Never Again Action were arrested on Capitol Hill Tuesday as they protested against the jailing of migrants and called on lawmakers to shut down the detention camps and defund ICE and CBP.

Protester: “Congress once again voted to increase funding to ICE and CBP by passing a supplemental funding bill to send $4.6 billion to bankroll the criminalization, detention and deportation of those seeking refuge on our southern border. We thank the 95 representatives who voted against funding hate, and say ‘shame’ to the 305 representatives”—

Protesters: “Shame!”

In a statement, Never Again Action said:

 “As Jews, we know what the separation of families, the covert rounding-up of people and the creation of concentration camps can lead to. We refuse to wait and see what happens next.”

They also said:

“We know what happens when people unaffected by crises act as bystanders and look the other way. We will not stay silent while our historical trauma is weaponized to distract from the terror that our government is unleashing on immigrant communities.”

(emphasis mine)

source

Oh, yeah, this too

Trump’s latest: we don’t have to abide by a Supreme Court decision, especially one that calls our arguments “contrived”.   We’ll do the thing these so-called judges called illegal by executive order, or whatever Bill Barr manages to pull oubit of his capacious ass.   Barr promises to find a work around to overcome an adverse Supreme Court decision (even as he recused himself from the Jeffery Epstein federal sex trafficking case– but not because his father once hired Epstein to teach at the exclusive Dalton School).

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said the explanation offered by the Trump administration for adding the question “appears to have been contrived.” But he left open the possibility that it could provide an adequate answer.

Executive branch officials must “offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public,” the chief justice wrote. “Accepting contrived reasons would defeat the purpose of the enterprise. If judicial review is to be more than an empty ritual, it must demand something better than the explanation offered for the action taken in this case.”    source

The Trump administration fast-tracked the case about asking a citizenship question on the 2020 census and got it heard by the 5-4 Supreme Court by its June 30 deadline.   The Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s argument that this question was necessary to somehow protect the Voting Rights Act (an act whose applications they otherwise oppose).   

Chief Justice Roberts wrote that executive branch officials ordinarily have broad discretion to make policy judgments. But he said the record in the case demonstrated that Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, had not given a full and accurate account of his decision to add the question.

In sworn testimony before Congress, Mr. Ross said he had decided to add the question “solely” in response to a Justice Department request in December 2017 for data to help it enforce the Voting Rights Act, or the V.R.A. Three federal trial judges have ruled that the evidence in the record demonstrated that Mr. Ross was not being truthful.

Chief Justice John Roberts declared that the Commerce Department provided a pretextual reason for wanting the citizenship question that was merely “a distraction,” in violation of the legal requirement that agencies disclose the true reasons behind their decisions.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the evidence in the case showed that “the V.R.A. played an insignificant role in the decision-making process.” Instead, the chief justice wrote, Mr. Ross had tried hard to find a rationale for adding the question.

“The secretary,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “was determined to reinstate a citizenship question from the time he entered office; instructed his staff to make it happen; waited while commerce officials explored whether another agency would request census-based citizenship data; subsequently contacted the attorney general himself to ask if D.O.J. would make the request; and adopted the Voting Rights Act rationale late in the process.”

“Altogether,” the chief justice wrote, “the evidence tells a story that does not match the explanation the secretary gave for his decision.”            source

None of this mattered to Boof Kavanaugh and his Federalist colleagues (all of whom voted to allow the citizenship question that will help to consolidate Republican power for the next decade), even though Trump didn’t give them anything to work with.   The Voting Rights Act argument was a transparent piece of toilet paper. [1]

Let’s not even touch the recent 5-4 majority’s stinking ruling on federal oversight of gerrymandering– according to the Federalists on the Supreme Court the corrupt practice of drawing tortured electoral maps to favor one party is, like the treatment of blacks or other despised minorities, strictly up to the local authorities to oversee.  Not a matter for the federal government to interfere in — states’ rights, you know.   Here’s the Grey Lady on that:

[The Supreme Court’s rulings on gerrymandering and the census have profound implications for American politics. Here’s what the decisions mean.]

It is well-known that asking the citizenship question on the census will cause various minority groups, already being rounded up by armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents  and deported or shipped off to concentration campsconcentration camps, not to answer the census at all.    This will result in lower population numbers in urban areas and, ultimately, fewer votes for these under-reported areas in Congress.  That’s because the census is used to apportion House seats.   Lower urban census tallies equals more power for non-urban populations.    More power for non-urban populations equals four more years of Trump, McConnell, Pence and their supremely well-funded malodorous ilk.

This open defiance of a Supreme Court ruling is, by the way, another argument for impeaching this vile orange piece of authoritarian shit.    

 

[1]  Here is a summary of the Federalist Society dissent (all five conservative justices are members, check it out), from the same NYT article:

In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said the majority had done something extraordinary. “For the first time ever,” he wrote, “the court invalidates an agency action solely because it questions the sincerity of the agency’s otherwise adequate rationale.”

Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh joined Justice Thomas’s partial dissent.

Justice Thomas said the courts should give executive branch officials the benefit of the doubt. “I do not deny,” he wrote, “that a judge predisposed to distrust the secretary or the administration could arrange those facts on a corkboard and — with a jar of pins and a spool of string — create an eye-catching conspiracy web.”

He said the consequences of the majority decision would be far-reaching. “Now that the court has opened up this avenue of attack,” he wrote, “opponents of executive actions have strong incentives to craft narratives that would derail them.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. filed his own partial dissent.

“To put the point bluntly,” he wrote, “the federal judiciary has no authority to stick its nose into the question whether it is good policy to include a citizenship question on the census or whether the reasons given by Secretary Ross for that decision were his only reasons or his real reasons.”               source

A fascinating hour, well-spent

I didn’t intend to listen to this entire reading of the Obstruction “counts” of the Mueller Report, but it is fucking fascinating.   Every American should hear this. 

It’s called “A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts”.   Each act is a separate instance of the president’s obstruction of justice.

There is no doubt, after hearing  these readings, that Mr. Trump acted, throughout the investigation into his corrupt acts, with corrupt intent.  The intent needed to sustain obstruction of justice charges.

1  President Trump asked the FBI director to shut down the investigation into National Security Advisor Michael Flynn

2  President Trump said he fired FBI director Comey because of the Russia Investigation

3 President Trump ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller   

4  President Trump attempted to curtail the Special Counsel’s investigation 

5  President Trump prevented the public disclosure of evidence 

6  President Trump wanted Attorney General Sessions to “unrecuse” from the Russia investigation   

7  President Trump directed White House counsel Don McGahn to create false documents that covered up the truth from investigators

8  President Trump tried to discourage Campaign chairman Paul Manafort and National Security Advisor Michael Flynn from cooperating with the Special Counsel’s investigation 

9  President Trump encouraged Michael Cohen to lie about Trump Tower Moscow

10  President Trump tried to get his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen not to cooperate with the investigation.   

Check it out.

Since the actions reported in the Mueller report President Trump has continued to behave like a guilty man.  He forced Jeff Sessions to resign (for not protecting him), made an interim appointment of an unqualified loyalist A.G. (without Senate confirmation), appointed a well-known obstructionist Unitary Executive zealot as A.G., he and his A.G. made repeated false, self-serving assertions about the findings of the Mueller report, his A.G. suppressed the report for a month while they spun the findings,  at his A.G.’s advice Trump asserted a flimsy protective privilege claim as part of a strategy to run out the clock, he publicly instructed subordinates and former employees to defy all subpoenas, continued to defiantly tweet obstructive messages, attacked Mueller and the Special Counsel’s team as “very sick and dangerous [criminals]”, has continued to insist the he is the completely innocent victim of a witch hunt.   A witch hunt that completely and totally exonerated him.   The man is an irrational, ethics-free, perpetual victim.   A national embarrassment and an international threat.

The motherfucker desperately needs to be impeached.  If you still don’t believe me, listen to the reading of the charges by Mueller.

Make it Concrete by Miryam Sivan

Make it Concrete is the richly layered tale of a woman haunted by history, by turns horrific, tender and wry.    It is beautifully told.   I read it slowly to savor every scene.  The tenderness of the telling, and the flashes of irrepressible playfulness, transform the tormented history wrestled with in the book into fertile background for deeply felt, living human drama.    History should always be written this way, placed in moving, living context; sadly, it rarely is.

Sivan’s protagonist, Isabel Toledo, makes a living interviewing survivors of the Nazi holocaust and writing their stories for publication.    She continually finds herself living horrific details of their ordeals.   Her loved ones keep trying to convince her to give up ghostwriting, which is clearly taking its toll on Isabel.   The ghosts — including those in her own immediate family — keep egging her on.   

Sivan sure-handedly weaves vivid, concisely told vignettes of history into the narrative of Isabel’s life in present-day Israel.   As someone also haunted by history, particularly family history (like Isabel’s) that is often zealously guarded,  I related to the way history — and the quest to know exactly what happened and “make it concrete”–  reverberate throughout this book.   Readers with no particular interest in history will also find themselves pulled into the compelling story of Isabel’s struggle to reconcile her choices in life with the lessons of the past– especially the horrific lessons of one of history’s more notorious epochs of inhumanity.   Make it Concrete is the story of the triumph of life, and love, over even the truly grotesque horrors of the past.

I give this book all the stars it is possible to give.  I look forward to the next book from the thoughtful, talented Miryam Sivan.

Moron-in-Chief

from the White House transcript of Trump’s historic July 4, 2019 speech accompanying his American military extravaganza:

In June of 1775, the Continental Congress created a unified army out of the revolutionary forces encamped around Boston and New York, and named after the great George Washington, Commander-in-Chief.

The Continental Army suffered the bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware, and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown.

Our Army manned the air (inaudible), it rammed the ramparts.  It took over the airports.  It did everything it had to do.  And at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory.  And when dawn came, their Star Spangled Banner waved defiant.  (Applause.)

source

and Cornwallis of Yorktown, yo.

oh, yeah, and this:

Outnumbered, American warriors fought through the bunkers of Pork Chop Hill and held the line of civilization in Korea.

In the elephant grass of Vietnam, the First Cavalry made its stand amid a forest consumed in flame, with enemies at every single turn.

The Army brought America’s righteous fury down to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and cleared the bloodthirsty killers from their caves.

They liberated Fallujah and Mosul, and helped liberate and obliterate the ISIS caliphate, just recently, in Syria.  One hundred percent gone.  (Applause.)

 

 

Frederick Douglass on the 4th of July

This is the guy President Trump noted is getting a lot of overdue recognition, presumably gaining ‘followers’ on twitter.  Frederick Douglass, an American genius, born a slave, died around the time the first Trump arrived on these shores, too late to make a fortune from slavery. 

Douglass gave a fiery speech on July 5, 1852 (almost nine years before first shots of the so-called Civil War) that the great James Earl Jones reads (and Democracy Now! seems to broadcast every July 4).    Happy Belated Birthday, America.

Not a concentration camp!

Screen Shot 2019-07-08 at 12.34.31 PM.png

You may have a better name than concentration camp for this kind of mass detention, shown in a photo apparently, released (for some reason) by the Department of Homeland Security.   The scene above could be from any old concentration camp, as far as I can see.   Pod 2, indeed.

Take a moment to consider that the word Homeland was never used to describe The (eh..) United States of America before the attacks of 9/11/01.   Naomi Wolf pointed out the origin of the word in her Bush/Cheney era book warning about creeping fascism.   The word was recycled by self-styled American patriots who got the idea from real fascists; the Nazis called their land die heimat.   

USA!   USA!!!

 

Understanding Trump’s Obstruction

In order to prove obstruction of justice, a prosecutor must prove corrupt intent.  This intent to thwart an investigation can be hard to prove [1], though, unless you are a supporter of the president’s, it is pretty clear that the president’s actions were (and are) motivated by the lifelong scofflaw’s desire to block anything he thinks could harm him. 

I found this podcast, an episode of NPR’s Embedded (which I’d heard when it came out) fascinating to listen to again.  Particularly in light of the additional information that Mueller’s investigators uncovered about Trump’s mood and behavior on finding out that he was under investigation. 

We now know that on May 17, 2017, the president was greatly alarmed to learn that a Special Counsel had been appointed, in spite of his firing of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn and, when he wouldn’t let the Flynn investigation go, fucking Jim Comey.  The president’s famous words to Sessions, McGahn and others in the Oval Office should really be more famous:

“Oh my God.  This is terrible.  This is the end of my presidency.  I’m fucked!”

Clearly the words of an innocent man, arguably, but no matter.  With a slight majority in the Senate the man has no fear of being removed from office, no matter how much evidence is stacked up against him by any real and theoretical House investigations.  Trump’s policies endear him to wealthy conservative campaign financiers, particularly his huge tax gift to America’s wealthiest and most deserving and his packing the federal courts (with the indispensable help of zero sum obstructionist Mitch McConnell, who refused to let Obama fill vacancies as they came up) with conservative, Federalist Society-vetted jurists.  These accomplishments, by themselves, are enough reason for Republicans to hold the line, even if Articles of Impeachment emerge from the House, even if the evidence of Trump’s corrupt intent and ultimate guilt of obstruction of justice and other crimes is overwhelming.

Like I said, this February 2018 podcast is fascinating to hear.  It lays out a pretty decent case for the president’s corrupt intent and shows cause and effect quite clearly.  I know this is all considered OLD NEWS, particularly for a populace trained to respond only to BREAKING NEWS, but it is important news.   It is also important EVIDENCE.  It’s amazing how strong a case is laid out by this investigative team more than a year before the Mueller Report fleshed out much of this with sworn quotes from witnesses and participants. 

From Mueller we learn that on May 17th Sessions received a call from his deputy A.G., Trump appointee Rod Rosenstein  (who, after Mueller filed his ‘inconclusive’ report, resigned with obsequious curtsies to Trump) informing him that he had appointed a Special Counsel.  Sessions informed Trump, who promptly lost his shit.   Trump felt betrayed by two men he’d handpicked and appointed to lead the Justice Department, men he’d trusted to be loyal and protect him. 

Trump yelled at loyal Alabama racist Jeff Sessions for following DOJ ethics advisors instead of being Trump’s loyal consigliere, his Roy Cohn, his Robert Kennedy.   In Trump’s mind Sessions traitorously refused to undo his recusal, a failure that allowed a “witch hunt” against him to continue.  This witch hunt jeopardized Trump’s presidency and aggravated Trump no end.   Sessions clearly honored the legal standard for recusal — the appearance of impropriety — in Sessions’ case a glaring appearance of impropriety.   Trump snarled at Sessions about how he failed to  protect Trump from first Comey and now Mueller.   After lambasting Sessions he returns to his predicament:

“Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels it ruins your presidency.   It takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything.   This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

From Mueller report, page 290. 

Clearly the same words would possibly be spoken by an innocent man, arguably, but Trump’s actions after uttering these words point strongly to consciousness of guilt, his corrupt intent.

Around this time he casually admitted on TV that he would have fired Comey (who pressed on investigating Mike Flynn’s contacts with Russia and his perjury to FBI investigators)  without the letters he had Rosenstein and Sessions write (letters that recommended Comey’s firing based on his mishandling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails).  Trump intended, several times over the course of the Special Counsel’s investigation, to fire Mueller and shut down and/or obstruct the investigation.  He did this in numerous ways, as laid out in Mueller’s executive summary, the one Bagpiper Bill Barr refused to release for several weeks, a month.  The president made his intention to end the “witch hunt” clear over and over, as reported in Mueller’s report, as described in the Embedded podcast more than a year before even Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report was released.

Only a rare genius of obstruction and evasion like Bagpiper Bill Barr could spin his boss’s corrupt-looking intent as the innocent, totally understandable motive of a wrongly accused man angry and frustrated about a partisan witch hunt.  But that spin would come a year after this great podcast came out.

Here is the host of the Embedded podcast:

MCEVERS: People who believe Trump obstructed justice say he basically tried to influence, slow down or even stop the Russia investigation in his interactions with Comey and with some other people. And the deal with obstruction is even if the Russia investigation turns up nothing on Trump – if there’s no there there, as Trump and his party insist, he can still be found to have obstructed justice. Like, you can obstruct a thing that doesn’t turn out to be a thing. Trump supporters say the idea that he obstructed anything is ridiculous. And they say Trump’s just an unorthodox president who does things like a New York City real estate developer. We should say right here at the beginning that Trump’s lawyers declined our request for an interview.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MCEVERS: So what we’re going to do today is lay out a bunch of key moments over the first year of Trump’s presidency – basically, everything we know that could be considered evidence of possible obstruction – a lot of these big, major news stories that pop up on your TV and your news feed – so that when you hear the next headline about obstruction of justice, you’ll know what it means because this part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, this is the one that some legal experts say might actually be adding up to a case against the president.

The host asks the DOJ correspondent to define obstruction of justice:

MCEVERS: (Laughter) All right. To start off with, why don’t you just do what you can to describe what is obstruction of justice?

JOHNSON: So what it means is to attempt to impede or hinder some kind of investigation – a congressional investigation, an FBI investigation, a Justice Department investigation – with corrupt intent. So the law says you don’t have to succeed in derailing the investigation. You just have to try. But the key words there are corrupt intent – some kind of bad purpose. And it can be hard to prove that. Not everybody comes out and says I am firing this person because I want to jam up this investigation which is targeting me or my children. So you have to try to prove, if you’re a prosecutor, some kind of pattern of behavior and also a good reason – a good reason to tell the judge and eventually the jury about why this person would work so hard to jam up a federal investigation. That’s what an obstruction is.

Once again, apply Boof Kavanaugh’s mother’s judicial philosophy (I paraphrase):

Use common sense.   What smells true and what smells like a pile of Bagpiper Bill’s steaming scats?

 

[1] recall that Bagpiper Bill Barr decided, and publicly insisted, that Trump’s intent was the intent of an innocent man honestly wishing to be done with a baseless partisan witch hunt against him and that his anger and frustration (both “acknowledged” by Mueller)  were the proof of his innocence.   

As was the case with the crying, angry, frustrated Boof Kavanaugh, unfairly crucified by left wing fringe billionaires who manufactured a story about a drunk prep school boy falling on to a younger girl and grabbing at her clothes.