11.29 9/11 Memorial with Ginny and Cara
11.26 Adam Serwer in The Atlantic: “Americans should not fear tension. They should fear its absence.”
11.25 Playing just three quarters of a game in which the Ravens defeated the Rams 45-6, Lamar Jackson threw for 169 yards and five touchdowns, and rushed for 95 yards.
11.25 Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, in opinion order Don McGahn to testify: “Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings. This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control. Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employees of the White House work for the People of the United States, and that they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Moreover, as citizens of the United States, current and former senior-level presidential aides have constitutional rights, including the right to free speech, and they retain these rights even after they have transitioned back into private life.”
11.24 The New York Times: “Pro-democracy candidates buoyed by months of street protests in Hong Kong won a stunning victory in local elections … [R]ecord numbers voted in a vivid expression of the city’s … anger with the Chinese government.” Why it matters: “It was a pointed rebuke of Beijing and its allies in Hong Kong.” “[T]he turnout — seven in 10 eligible voters — suggested that the public continues to back the democracy movement, even as the protests grow increasingly violent. . . . With three million voters casting ballots, pro-democracy candidates captured 389 of 452 elected seats, up from only 124 and far more than they have ever won. . . The government’s allies held just 58 seats, a remarkable collapse from 300.”
11.24 Rick Perry on Fox: “I’m a big believer that the God of our universe is still very active in the details of the day-to-day lives of government. You know, Barack Obama doesn’t get to be the President of the United States without being ordained by God. Neither did Donald Trump.”
11.24 Jim Quinn, in the acknowledgments section of his memoir Don’t Be Afraid To Win: Jamie Malanowski took my initial drafts chapter by chapter and through painstaking editing and insightful comments shaped my work into an actual book. Along the way, he taught me whatever I now know about real writing, in contrast to spewing out legal mumbo jumbo. Thankfully, Jamie is also a font of sports trivia, which helpedenormously in framing the narrative with interesting bits of sports arcana.” Thanks, Jim–I enjoyed it.
11.22 Trump on Fox and Friends: “Kellyanne is great but she’s married to a total wack job, She must’ve done some number on him, Ainsley. I don’t know what Kellyanne did to that guy because I don’t even know him. I met him for a second. He’s got to be some kind of a nutjob because she must have done some bad things because that guy is crazy.”
11.21 Peggy Noonan, in The Wall Street Journal: “Look, the case has been made.”
11.21 Shep Smith, at the International Press Freedom Awards: “Intimidation and vilification of the press is now a global phenomenon. We don’t have to look far for evidence of that. . . “Our belief a decade ago that the online revolution would liberate us now seems a bit premature, doesn’t it?. . . Autocrats have learned how to use those same online tools to shore up their power,” he added. “They flood the world of information with garbage and lies, masquerading as news. There’s a phrase for that.”
11.21 The Republican National Committee spent $94,800 last month on copies of Donald Trump Jr.’s book “Triggered” for a donor promotion
11.21 Robin Givhan in the Post: “Other career officials have testified during these hearings, but Holmes and Hill are especially striking because they arrived perfectly wardrobed in the style of Washington’s anonymous, conscientious power brokers: both the masculine and feminine versions. Their power is in their experience, their institutional knowledge and the quiet counsel they provide to the showmen who actually pull the levers and make the speeches. But when the expertise of the Holmeses and Hills are ignored, that’s all too often when events go sideways.In general, these creatures of the capital city boast résumés with a long list of degrees that make them experts on countries that most folks only know as answers on “Jeopardy!” Without their slightly peevish emphasis on the correct pronunciation of “Kyiv,” all of us would still be saying it wrong. They’re often portrayed as awkward or drab, but more often they’ve led colorful, cosmopolitan lives full of harrowing and absurd adventures. At a distance, and at a glance, people will often misread their clothes as frumpy. Sometimes that’s true, but look closely and you’ll find that the clothes of career diplomats and bureaucrats are often modern and relevant and proper. In the case of Holmes and Hill, their attire reflected the situation. They were dressed to make plain everything that diplomats do. Most definitely, they never distract.”
11.21 Fiona Hill: “I had a bit of a blow up with Ambassador Sondland, and I had a couple of testy encounters with him. One of those was in June 18 when I actually said to him, who put you in charge of Ukraine? And I mean, I’ll admit I was a bit rude. And that’s when he told me the president. And that shut me up. And this other meeting was about 15, 20 minutes, exactly as he depicted it was. I was actually, to be honest, I was angry with him. And, you know, I hate to say it. But often when women show anger, it’s not fully appreciated. It’s often, you know, pushed on to emotional issues or perhaps deflected onto other people. And what I was angry about was that he wasn’t coordinating with us. I now actually realize, having listened to his deposition, that he was absolutely right. That he wasn’t coordinating with us because we weren’t doing the same thing that he was doing. So I was upset with him that he wasn’t fully telling us about all of the meetings that he was having. And he said to me: “But I’m briefing the president, I’m briefing Chief of staff Mulvaney, I’m briefing Secretary Pompeo, and I’ve talked to Ambassador Bolton. Who else do I have to deal with?” And the point is, we have a robust interagency process that deals with Ukraine. It includes Mr. Holmes. It includes Ambassador Taylor as the chargé in Ukraine. It includes a whole load of other people. But it struck me when yesterday, when you put up on the screen Ambassador Sondland’s emails, and who was on these emails and he said “These that these people need to know,” that he was absolutely right. Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand. And we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged. So he was correct. And I had not put my finger on that at the moment, but I was irritated with him and angry with him that he wasn’t fully coordinating. And I did say to him, Ambassador Sondland, Gordon, I think this is all going to blow up. And here we are.
11.21 Fiona Hill: “I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine, not Russia, attacked us in 2016. These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes.”
11.20 Amy Klobuchar: “If you think a woman can’t beat Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi does it every single day.”
11.20 Sondland: “I know that members of this committee frequently frame these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a ‘quid pro quo’?. . . With regard to the requested White House call and the White House meeting, the answer is yes.”
11.20 Gordon Sondland ”Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret”
11.20 Albany
11.19 Albany
11.18 Thomas Boswell in The Washington Post: Something that was unthinkable for my entire lifetime, since my Sammy Baugh-loving father took me to see the Redskins play the Baltimore Colts when I was 10 in 1957, has now become obvious. The change happened slowly. Then, over the past 18 months as the Nats, Caps and WNBA’s Mystics showed Washington could win titles, the flip happened fast: The Redskins lost Washington.
11.18 Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a liberal think tank, quoted in The Washington Post: `Where’s the good news for Republicans? In 2018 and 2019, Trump had two worst-case or near-worst elections in a row; his numbers today are below where they were on Election Day 2018; incumbents are retiring in droves, making 2020 even more challenging; and Trump’s not just trailing 2020 Democrats nationally by a significant margin — he’s not clearly ahead in any important battleground state.”
11.18 Grand Central Terminal, evening rush
11.17 Christine Emba in the Washington Post: A faction of “dissident” conservatives, organizing online with “America First” as a motto, have claimed the mantle of True Conservatism for their own. Dispensing with mainstream appeals, they aim to promote the “traditional values” they say Donald Trump was elected to preserve: an isolationist foreign policy, extreme ethnic and racial restrictions on immigration, anti-LGBT attitudes and conspiracy theories about how whites are being replaced by Jews and nonwhites. The insurgents decry Turning Point and much of the GOP establishment as “Conservatism Inc.” And they are positioning themselves as Trump’s rightful heirs.
11.17 Yoni Applebaum in The Atlantic: The body politic is more fractious than at any time in recent memory. Over the past 25 years, both red and blue areas have become more deeply hued, with Democrats clustering in cities and suburbs and Republicans filling in rural areas and exurbs. In Congress, where the two caucuses once overlapped ideologically, the dividing aisle has turned into a chasm. As partisans have drifted apart geographically and ideologically, they’ve become more hostile toward each other. In 1960, less than 5 percent of Democrats and Republicans said they’d be unhappy if their children married someone from the other party; today, 35 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Democrats would be, according to a recent Public Religion Research Institute/Atlantic poll—far higher than the percentages that object to marriages crossing the boundaries of race and religion. As hostility rises, Americans’ trust in political institutions, and in one another, is declining. A study released by the Pew Research Center in July found that only about half of respondents believed their fellow citizens would accept election results no matter who won. At the fringes, distrust has become centrifugal: Right-wing activists in Texas and left-wing activists in California have revived talk of secession.
11.16 Ristorante Caterina De’ Medici at CIA with Cathy and Tim. An all-pasta menu. Meh.
11.15 Rep. Liz Cheney: Yovanovitch “clearly is somebody who’s been a public servant to the United States for decades, and I don’t think the president should have done that.”
11.15 Kenneth Starr, on Fox News: “I must say that the president was not advised by counsel in deciding to do this tweet. Extraordinarily poor judgment.”
11.15 Marie Yovanovitch: “I do wonder is why it was necessary to smear my reputation.”
11.15 Yovanovitch: “Well, it’s very intimidating.” Schiff: “Designed to intimidate, is it not?” Yovanovitch: “I mean, I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is to be intimidating.” Schiff: “Well, I want to let you know, Ambassador, that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.”
11.15 Trump on Twitter: “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go?”
11.15 Roger Stone a self-described political trickster, was convicted of all seven criminal counts that he faced: obstruction of proceedings, five founds of false statements, and one count of witness tampering.
11.15 NYTimes: In the July 25 phone call, according to a rough transcript released by the White House, Mr. Trump called Ms. Yovanovitch “bad news” and said that “she’s going to go through some things.” Asked her reaction when she read that, Ms. Yovanovitch said: “Shocked. Appalled. Devastated that the president of the United States would talk about any ambassador like that to a foreign head of state — and it was me. I mean, I couldn’t believe it.” Asked what the words “going to go through” sounded like to her, she said, “It sounded like a threat.”
11.15 Barack Obama: “Even as we push the envelope and we are bold in our vision we also have to be rooted in reality. The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.”
11.14 With 8 seconds left on the clock in the Cleveland Browns’ 21-7 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, a brawl broke out as the Browns’ Myles Garrett tackled Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph. Garrett tore Rudolph’s helmet off and swung it, smashing the quarterback over the head.
11.14 Sen. John Kennedy: “I stand before you tonight a proud Deplorable. And, unlike some of the folks in Washington, D.C. — I’m talking about the ‘cultured’, cosmopolitan, goat’s milk latte-drinking, avocado toast-eating insider elite — as a Deplorable, I believe that everybody counts.”
11.14 Paul Krugman on twitter: “To say what should be obvious, Trump really isn’t on trial in these hearings. The evidence of impeachable offenses has been overwhelming for weeks. What’s really happening is a sort of trial of the GOP. Anyone who’s been awake for the past three years knew that Rs would defend Trump no matter what. It was also obvious that they would eventually try to smear the witnesses and peddle nutso conspiracy theories. But they did all that ON THE FIRST DAY. And it didn’t work, except in the alternative Fox News universe. So I’m wondering what comes next. Do the conspiracy theories get even crazier, accusing everyone of being on Soros‘s payroll? Or will there be something even further out of the box? A mass GOP walkout? A staged Brooks Brothers riot? Don’t say I’m being silly — they’ve got nothing, and will do anything to hide that reality
11.13 Minority lawyer Steve Castor: “This irregular channel of diplomacy–it is not as outlandish as it could be, is that correct?” Taylor: “It is not as outlandish as it could be. I agree.”
11.13 Ambassador William Taylor: “In the presence of my staff at a restaurant, Ambassador Sondland called President Trump and told him of his meetings in Kyiv. The member of my staff could hear President Trump on the phone, asking Ambassador Sondland about “the investigations.” Ambassador Sondland told President Trump that the Ukrainians were ready to move forward. Following the call with President Trump, the member of my staff asked Ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine. Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for.
11.13 George Conway on MSNBC: there are two ways to look at it: The first — the way I prefer to look at it — is the holistic view, and the holistic view is that when you become president, you raise your right hand and you swear to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and also the Constitution provides and uses that word, those words “faithfully execute,” in reference to faithfully execute the laws. And when you take on that duty — and the framers really took oaths seriously — you are promising to take that awesome power that’s being thrust upon you and use it for the nation’s benefit and not for your own benefit. And the problem with Donald Trump is, he always sees himself first.
11.12 Ruth Marcus in the Post: It can’t be that a female candidate gets to clobber a rival — “running in the wrong primary” was pretty tough — but can’t be hit back. As the Biden campaign pointed out, he has used similar language about men, calling John McCain “an angry man” in 2008, for example. The woman in the arena has to be able to take a punch as well as throw one. At the same time, it is naive not to acknowledge that some words applied to a male candidate are loaded with implied derision when applied to a woman. “Angry Bernie Sanders” is a more palatable nickname than “Angry Elizabeth Warren.” Two things can be simultaneously true: Biden is not being consciously sexist in using the A-word, and yet his use of the word when applied to Warren carries risks seen and unseen. Gender is an ancient minefield with explosives still to be detected, much less defused.
11.12 Max Boot in The Washington Post: Second-Term Trump could deport hundreds of thousands, even millions, of “dreamers” and other undocumented immigrants, causing untold human suffering. He could finally prosecute critics such as Hillary Clinton and Comey, purge all of the federal investigators who dared to investigate him, pardon all of his aides who have been convicted of crimes, deploy the FBI to gather dirt on his critics, and retaliate against the media organizations he loathes. The Justice Department’s independence, already fraying, might become lost altogether, removing a major obstacle to American authoritarianism. With only four years left to cash in on the presidency, Second-Term Trump could give free rein to epic, Russian-style corruption. He could hold Cabinet meetings at the Trump International Hotel, mandate that federal employees stay at his properties while traveling and sell federal land at rock-bottom rates for Trump projects. He could finally realize his dream of building a Trump Tower in Moscow — and in the capital of any other country that wants anything from the United States.
11.10 Saw Harriet at Jacob Burns. Excellent.
11.7 Christine Emba in the Washington Post: [Rubio] spoke about how American capitalism had run aground and how a different understanding of the role of business and markets could save us from drowning. He argued that business had forgotten its obligation to society, describing in detail the disintegration of families and hollowing of communities. Noting the right of workers to share in the benefits they create for their employers, he proposed taxes on stock buybacks, an expanded federal child tax credit, paid parental leave and even a national cooperative bank for domestic investment. And he posed what might be the key question of our time: “Does our country exist to serve the interest of the market, or does the market exist to serve the interest of our nation, and of our people?” Considering the level of division that seems evident day to day, both the right and the left might be inching toward consensus that capitalism is not working for Americans anymore. Even Republicans realize that the market has ceased to serve the people, that the people have grown to resent it. And that unless business and its GOP allies find a better way, the people will instead. Into this breach, Rubio now calls for an economy in which “workers and businesses are not competitors for their share of limited resources, but instead partners in an effort that benefits both.”
11.7 Brian Winter in The Washington Post: We live in an era when virtually every consumer choice is scrutinized for its ethics: Is it local? Is it vegan? Carbon-neutral? Yet the same largely urban, mostly affluent set that wouldn’t be caught dead driving an SUV, using a plastic straw or smoking a cigarette somehow still has no moral qualms about hoovering up a line of coke on a Friday night. The dynamics here are complex: Humans have been getting high since at least the days of Mesopotamia, and addiction is a grave public health crisis that I do not wish to trivialize. That said, it’s clear that in 2019, far too many Americans, Europeans and others continue to have an utterly anachronistic — and often racist — ethical blind spot when it comes to Latin America and the real-life consequences of recreational drug use. I lived in Latin America for a decade and still write about the region for a living, so I’m probably closer to the story than most. But — sorry — ignorance is not an excuse after a week like this one, when the massacre of three women and six children (including two infants who were burned) in Sonora, Mexico, was the top story on U.S. national news. The exact circumstances remain unclear, but no one doubts that Mexican cartels were behind the killing. It comes at a time when drug-related violence is rising once again not only in Mexico — where there were a record 25,890 murders from January through September — but throughout much of the region. Cocaine trafficking is also, along with oil, a main source of hard currency sustaining Venezuela’s dictatorship, which has murdered thousands of dissidents and driven more than 4 million others from the country in recent years. Yes, you could argue it’s the war on drugs, more than drugs themselves, that is fueling the bloodshed and mass displacement of people. But it’s not clear that decriminalization or legalization would be a silver bullet for eliminating the black market for narcotics or reducing violence. Until laws change, this is the reality we live in. So if cheeseburgers contribute to global warming and plastic bottles are destroying the oceans, then we also need to be talking about how America’s love for cocaine — which may have started rising again recently after several years in decline — probably contributed to a young family being incinerated in their car, along with thousands of other deaths that gathered less global media attention because they didn’t involve white American nationals.
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11.5 HuffPo: Democrats made major gains in state-level elections across the country, revealing President Donald Trump’s weakness in even the reddest of states and putting the lie to the idea of a massive voter backlash against House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. In Kentucky, a state Trump won in 2016 by about 30 percentage points, Attorney General Andy Beshear (D) apparently unseated Republican Gov. Matt Bevin by harnessing discontent with Bevin’s attacks on the state’s Medicaid expansion and his efforts to pare back public-sector pensions. In Virginia, which has been trending Democratic for at least a decade, the party wiped out the last vestiges of Republican power. By flipping both the House of Delegates and the state Senate, Democrats under the leadership of Gov. Ralph Northam (D) have secured what is known as a “trifecta” by bringing the state under unified Democratic control
11.4 Paul Waldman in the Post: Liberals care deeply about policy. As a consequence, they often drastically overestimate the degree to which voters care about policy, or even grasp policy distinctions. As a group (of course there are exceptions), conservatives are far less burdened by any concern for the nuts and bolts of governing. They just want to cut taxes, slash the safety net and increase military spending, and you don’t have to think too deeply about any of it to do all that. As a result, they have a much better understanding of what doesn’t matter in presidential campaigns. Democratic issue positions tend to be more popular than Republican ones, often hugely more popular. Majorities of Americans prefer raising taxes on the wealthy, increasing the minimum wage, guaranteeing all Americans health coverage, taking action on climate change, keeping abortion legal and passing stricter gun laws, to name a few.But ironically, this fact has in the past proved problematic for Democrats. As Michael Tomasky explained in 2004, while Democratic pollsters tell their candidate that they are winning on issues, the GOP candidate, knowing he can’t win on a simple issue comparison alone, makes the campaign about character, or about broad themes that transcend any particular issue. And it frequently works.
11.4 E.Jean Carrol annpunces that she is suing Trump
11.3 Donald Trump via Twitter: False stories are being reported that a few Republican Senators are saying that President Trump may have done a quid pro quo, but it doesn’t matter, there is nothing wrong with that, it is not an impeachable event. Perhaps so, but read the transcript, there is no quid pro quo!
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