May 13, 2019: Brokeahantas, Into the Sewer, Wag the Swine

It all started last weekend. Bill Maher in the New Rules segment of his television show chided the Democrats for not being nasty enough to our Caesar Disgustus for, in effect, bringing thoughts and prayers to a knife fight. Disgustus, as Maher was quick to point out, has no conscience, knows no shame and, facing trial and conviction if unelected, will do anything to stay in power. To defeat him one must, as an old friend of mine used to counsel: “If you are going to kill the rats, you've got to climb down into the sewer”. So it is.

To that end, Maher suggested that to defeat tRUMP, one must play the game on his terms, on his turf. Accordingly, it is time to strike back. I've suggested to the office of Congresswoman Maxine Waters that she use the moniker Caesar Disgustus but, while her office found it amusing, it evidently didn't get traction. Maher, a real comedic genius, said that Elizabeth Warren should strike back by calling tRUMP, in the aftermath of yet another front-page article on his finances, “Brokehantas”.

It has taken off. In the ensuing week or so Facebook and social media have been littered with memes with tRUMP wearing a feathered headband under the title, or with numbers gleaned from the gross losses of 1.7 billion over the ten year span that The New York Times covered (1985-1994). Accordingly, several wags, with calculators at the ready, posted these numbers under the heading of “Brokehantas”. Disgustus “managed” to lose:

--$11,466.00 per hour

--274,000. per day

--8.3 Million dollars per month

--100 million dollars per year

Every year for Ten Years!

It is clear that our erstwhile “stable genius” and financial tycoon cannot manage a respectable lemonade stand. As earlier New York Times reporting has indicated, Fred tRUMP came to the rescue of his errant son to the tune of nearly half a billion dollars, in today's money as Donald struggled with looming financial catastrophe in Atlantic City.

So here we have it. He bilked the New York City banks of over a billion dollars in loan defaults, declared bankruptcies on several of his enterprises, and lost over a billion dollars in a ten year period while at the same time touting his business 'genius' in the best selling “The Art of the Deal”.

The question looms: where is he getting his money now that the New York banks treat him as the parasite he is? Several answers have been put forward by those who know him best—his biographers and those who follow the financial pages. They include the Russian and American mafia, money laundering, racketeering, bank and insurance fraud, cheating contractors and vendors, employing illegal aliens and, his favorite, tax evasion.

These raise further questions: to what extent does his economic dependence upon such sources dictate the foreign and domestic policies now pursued by this government? To whom does he owe money and how are these obligations shaping our policies? Have these activities ceased during his bastard presidency? What is he so desperately trying to hide?

The republic demands answers, and demand answers now. In the meantime our “stable genius” has started a trade war with the nation's banker, inviting retaliatory measures that can only destabalize an already uncertain economy while threatening to start shooting wars in the Middle East and Latin America. As the tail wags the swine....

Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh.

Impeach Brokehantas and Imprison.

May 11, 2018: Art of the Deal, Art of the Steal, Art of the Squeal

That Fred Trump would send his son to a military academy was a personal tragedy; that he should have retrieved him is a national calamity”.

             ----from The Quotations of Chairman Joe

It is painfully obvious that our Caesar Disgustus cannot run a respectable lemonade stand. He has no management skills and, clearly, he has no negotiating skills. He has squandered hundreds of millions of his father's money, lost over a billion dollars in the late 80's and early 90's and would have been kicked into well deserved oblivion, if not the penitentiary had it not been for.....?

That, as we used to say, is the sixty-four thousand dollar question. We know that the billionaire Russian fertilizer king came to his rescue on a Florida real-estate investment. We know, as tRUMP's larvae has readily admitted, that after he bilked the New York Banks out of a billion or so dollars that these sources of income dried up and the family began to rely more and more from Russian money. Disgustus, stealing directly from contractors, bankers, and tax fraud moved into stealing indirectly through the medium of the Russian oligarchy and organized crime. Reports of money laundering and racketeering fill the pages of his chroniclers. An now we have the Art of the Squeal wherein our intrepid 'billionaire' protests his innocence, despite all the evidence to the contrary, while squealing like a stuck pig.

The great deal maker has always been a fraud. He knows nothing about the deal. He is drawn only to what flashes before his eyes at any given moment. Now we find him in a trade war with China, raising tariffs to 25 per cent on a huge range of goods and services thinking this will make the Chinese knuckle under and bend to his will.

Disgustus, totally ignorant of history, is innocent of the consequences. Tariff protections only work if the nation raising these barriers is fostering the very industries producing the products in question. Raising tariffs then forces the people to buy domestically produced goods creating employment and keeping the wealth in the country. We did this with the textile industry, steel-tool industries, machine industry, farm produces and a whole range of industrial and agricultural enterprises when the United States was building its industrial base.

But the 'suits' have been allowed to gut the industrial base so that almost nothing is being made in this country. As a consequence, tariffs serve only to raise the cost of living because Americans cannot turn to domestic suppliers who would otherwise be producing the same items at a now lower cost.

In addition, Disgustus who understands nothing—especially finance—fails to understand that China is America's banker. When we were young, the national debt did not have the significance that it has now for two principle reasons: It wasn't as high as it is now and we owed the money to ourselves. Now, increasingly, we owe the money to foreign nationals and governments—and the Chinese hold much of that debt. Disgustus could provoke a response wherein the Chinese simply stop buying treasury notes driving interest rates through the roof forcing draconian budget cuts or, worse, dumping the notes they now have.

In any case, the use of trade to force action by foreign governments has an uncertain record. One is reminded of the Confederacy employing a strategy of forcing Britain to recognize Richmond by burning nearly it's entire stock of cotton. The thinking was that it would create such havoc in the English textile mills that the imperative of kneeling before 'king cotton' would become immediately obvious. Instead, the English sought supply elsewhere and developed the Egyptian and Indian cotton markets.

Disgustus doesn't understand that it isn't the 1950's anymore. No, the conservatives and their capitalist overlords have succeeded in outsourcing the American economy and the palliative offered by this ignoramus and his team will succeed only in further destabilizing the national economy.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh

Impeach and Imprison.

May 10, 2019: Decade of Losses, King Of the Losers, Financially Embattled Thousandaire

Yesterday, The New York Times reported that from 1985 through 1994, our erstwhile business tycoon cum 'president' lost over a billion dollars. (1) In a front-page article, Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig tell us that:

“By the time his master-of-the-universe memoir 'Trump: The Art of the Deal' hit bookstores in 1987, Donald J. Trump was already in deep financial distress, losing tens of millions of dollars on troubled business deals, according to previously unrevealed figures from his federal income tax returns.

“Mr. Trump was propelled to the presidency, in part, by a self-spun narrative of business success and of setbacks triumphantly overcome. He has attributed his first run of reversals and bankruptcies to the recession that took hold in 1990. But 10 years of tax information obtained by The New York Times paints a different, and far bleaker picture of his deal making abilities and financial condition.

“The data—printouts from Mr. Trump's official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts, with the figures from his federal tax form 1040 for the years 1985 to 1994—represents the fullest and most detailed look to date at the president's taxes, information he has kept from public view. Though the information does not cover the tax years at the center of an escalating battle between the Trump administration and Congress, it traces the most tumultuous chapter in a long business career—an era of fevered acquisition and spectacular collapse.

“The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of 46.1 million from his core businesses—largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling 1.17 billion in losses for the decade.

“In fact,” continued Buettner and Craig, “year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual taxpayer. The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. Compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991—more than $250 million each year—were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.” (2)

The numbers give lie to the myth moving Tony Swartz, who wrote The Art of the Deal to say that the book should be reclassified as fiction. Indeed, Disgustus has again taken to Twitter tweeting that the Times piece was a 'hit job' . Disgustus, always playing the victim, finds himself turning The Art of the Deal into The Art of the Squeal.

Gail Collins, writing in today's Times was having none of it. Referring to the same article published in The Times yesterday, she observed that Disgustus “during his 'Art of the Deal' era...was pretty much the national champion for financial underachievers.” (3) Noting the years 1990 and 1991, she quipped : “well, you can't deny he was a record breaker.” (4)

Collins then went on to describe tRUMP as “a financially embattled thousandaire” to which she reported, “he took great offense”. (5) These were the same years, it should be noted that tRUMP biographer David Kay Johnston published an article in which he told the reader that he probably had more wealth than tRUMP. Disgustus brought legal action but Johnston demanded through legal 'discovery' that tRUMP demonstrate otherwise. The case was dropped.

“However,” observes Collins, “it's become increasingly clear that even the cynical version of Donald Trump as a businessman—undisciplined self-promoter who bought and sold things just to convince himself he wasn't a useless nothingburger living off his rich dad's money—was maybe an overestimation.

“Which can be sort of unnerving, given his current job.” (6) Indeed.

'An Br'er Putin he jus' laugh and laugh

Impeach and Imprison.

_____________

1. Buettner, Russ., and Craig, Susanne. “Trump Tax Figures Show A Decade of Huge Losses; Core Businesses absorbed over $1 Billion in Red Ink From 1985 Through 1994.” The New York Times. Wednesday, May 8, 2019. Pages A1 & A14-15.
2. Ibid. Page A1
3. Collins, Gail. “Donald Trump, King Of the Losers” The New York Times. Thursday, May 9, 2019. Page A23
4. Ibid
5. Ibid
6. Ibid

May 9, 2019: Obstruction Squared, Disgustus Raves On, Constitutional Crisis

With the limited release of The Mueller Report, Caesar Disgustus told the nation that he had no problem with Mueller testifying before the various committees investigating his serial iniquities. No one took him seriously. Indeed, true to form, he was found within hours reversing course now declaring that the entire report is protected by “executive privilege”. Executive privilege has been around since Washington, but it is worth noting that it is almost never invoked unless for nefarious reasons. In any case, executive privilege does not apply to criminal acts or attempts to obstruct investigations into such acts.

Nevertheless, Disgustus raves on. Adding insult to injury, he is now displaying open contempt for the Congress of the United States by forbidding anyone within the administration or those who have worked previously in this maladministration to testify, again with the bogus claim of 'executive privilege. Accordingly, the attorney general has now been cited for contempt of Congress for failure to deliver Mueller's unredacted report to the House Committee on the Judiciary. Contempt charges are being considered for the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Internal Revenue Service for failure to abide by a Harding Era law, written in the aftermath of the Teapot Dome Scandal, requiring the IRS to hand over the tax returns of any citizen the House demands. Mnuchin faces a penalty of up to five years in a federal penitentiary for failure to comply, but fail he did. Here we have it, obstructing investigations into the obstruction of justice. Obstruction squared. Obstruction so flagrant that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, long reluctant to pursue impeachment, has now finally recognized that we are in a constitutional crisis.

Disgustus knows he is in over his head. He knows he's guilty. He knows he is where he is by means of fraud; that this is a bastard presidency. And, since he cannot bring himself to openly admit his manifest failing, he is begging the Democrats to do the dirty work of ending this national nightmare.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

May 8, 2019: People tRUMP God, Lord And Savior, Mysterious Ways

“If Obama were elected by the will of the people and Caesar Disgustus installed by the will of god; it is clear that the judgment of the people is far superior to the will of your god.”

         ----from The Quotations of Chairman Joe

Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense—a political tract influential in fomenting the American Revolution, once said that in America the king is not the law; the law is king. But among the religious wrong, who hold that our Caesar Disgustus was put upon the throne by god almighty, the principles of the revolution are now called into question.

It is easy, I have observed, for those who believe in a sky god, one that will descent from the heavens in order to save our mortal souls, to hold that every problem on earth can, therefore, be pawned off on some fictional being in order to evade responsibility. But it is more than that. The idea of coupling a lord and savior in the same expression does, by confusing the two, lay the basis for the divine right of kings—in this case kings who descend, like Hitler before him, from the sky to bring order to our turbulent and troublesome existence. And so, the cult of Donald J. tRUMP.

It is no mere coincidence that the political base of our Caesar Disgustus is made of the mortar of christian conservatism for it is in the currency of the fundamentalists that our Disgustus now traffics. Led by the larvae of previous political whores, Graham and Falwell jrs., the “flock” are now told that our Caesar, like Cyrus in the old testament, was placed upon the throne by god himself in order to do his will. And, since it is universally known that the lord works in mysterious ways, the illogic—the mystery—of this revelation stands, in the twisted logic of the cult, stands to reason.

When one rules, as in the olden times, by divine right it follows that when the will of the people rule otherwise, one is affronted by the outcome. The temerity of the people to take it upon themselves to put a black man on the throne simply cannot be countenanced. He must, therefore, be illegitimate and the restoration that follows must, indeed, be the will of god.

And so god descends from the skies in a plane with his name emblazoned in gold lettering and any questioning of his judgment will incur his wrath. The ReSCUMlickans have stood Thomas Paine and the constitution upon their head, for the regent of god is now the law. God now tRUMPs the people and the republic now hangs in the balance.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

May 7, 2019: Experience is Powerless, High and Risin', No Good Will Come

“How high's the water, mama?

Two feet high and risin'
How high's the water, papa?
She said it's two feet high and risin'”
            ----Johnny Cash Two Feet High and Risin'

The will to ignorance commands, like an ancient proverb, The Generation of Swine. No lessons are drawn from experience as the idiotlogical imperative stands astride the political landscape.

Jeanna Smialek, writing in the technology/finance section of The New York Times, reported recently that yet another debt crisis is developing.

“Companies with large amounts of debt are borrowing more money at a breakneck pace, prompting the Federal Reserve to flag the trend as one potential risk in the financial system.

“Loans to companies with large amounts of outstanding debt—known as leveraged lending—grew by 20 percent in 2018, to $1.1 trillion, according to the Fed's twice-annual Financial Stability Report. The share of new, large loans going to comparatively risky borrowers now exceeds peak levels reached previously in 2007 and 2014.

“Defaults on these loans remain low, but the Fed warned that could change if the economy faltered.” (1)

The Fed warns that the nature of this debt could act as a serious brake to the economy in the next recession. But there is more to it than that. Smialek points out that “the loans are either held by mutual funds, which pool money from many different investors, or are grouped together and used to back securities called collateralized loan obligations. Those are sold to banks, mutual funds and other investors—with asset managers, insurance companies and hedge funds claiming the riskiest slices” (2).

The Fed maintains that the loans are “different” from the mortgage-backed boom of the 2008 financial crisis, but “(S)till,” writes Smialek, “the central bank is not sounding especially confident about the fallout should an economic hiccup ripple through the leveraged lending sector”. (3)

Nor should it be, for the hand of the Boomers—The Generation of Swine—remains about the throat of the body politic. Accordingly, commercial banks and insurance companies which formerly were forbidden under the Glass-Steagall Act, the New Deal Era firewall between commercial banks and insurance companies and Wall Street speculations, now hold a large portion of the most risk-prone portfolio. This means that the failure to restore Glass-Steagall means that with the next debt-driven recession we once again have not simply an economic downturn but a full-blown financial crisis.

In the meantime the quintessential Boomer, already running trillion dollar deficits during time of prosperity, threatens a 25% tariff on America's banker. Imagine if the Chinese stop buying Treasury Notes in retaliation. Interest rates go up as does unemployment, the economy slows and this whole house of cards comes tumbling down about our heads.

When experience is powerless to instruct, no good will come of it.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

________________

1. Smialek, Jeanna. “Leveraged Loans Pass Peak 2007 Crisis Level” The New York Times. Tuesday, May 7, 2019. Page B3
2. Ibid
3. Ibid

May 4, 2019: Working Class Hero, Despising The Heartland, When Smith-Blarney Speaks

“Keep you doped with religion

and sex and TV
and you think you're so clever
and classless and free
but you're still fucking peasants
as far as I can see

A Working Class Hero is something to be
A Working Class Hero is something to be”

                         ----John Lennon “Working Class Hero”

“Who really despises the American heartland?”, asks economist Paul Krugman in The New York Times. (1) The Republicans, that's who.

Oh yes, 'liberals' like Bill Maher routinely denigrate the 'flyover' states, claiming that all one sees from the height of fifty thousand feet are vast empty spaces. Farms, says Maher, are so boring. Maher isn't alone. Books like “What's Wrong With Kansas” have been painted the plains as the modern home of the Flintstones as the 'liberal elite' struggle to understand what is happening in America.

While denigrating the great Heartland, liberals fail to understand that it is from this America that gave birth to the very ideals and institutional reforms that they hold dear. What's happening in the

Heartland is that it has been left behind. Liberals, failing to come to grips with what has happened in the last half-century, are perplexed and deeply frustrated. A frustration that boils over, on occasion, into statements embodied in the remarks of comedian Bill Maher. 

But for true contempt, as Krugman points out, one must turn to the conservatives. Conservatives, always representing Wall Street and the moneyed interests have long held those that create the wealth in contempt. One has only to consult their tax policies—taxing work at higher rates than wealth—as evidence of this. Accordingly, they routinely disparage those that sweat for a living, from the urban working class to the farmers of the Midwest and South. As an example, Krugman presents tRUMP's nominee to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Stephen Moore.

“'If you live in the Midwest, where else do you want to live besides Chicago? You don't want to live in Cincinnati or Cleveland or, you know, these armpits of America.' So declared Stephen Moore, the man Donald Trump wants to install on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, during a 2014 event held at a think tank called, yes, the Heartland Institute.

“The Crowd laughed.

“Moore”, continued Krugman, “is an indefensible choice on many grounds. Even if he hadn't shown himself to be extremely misogynistic and have an ugly personal history, his track record on economics—always wrong, never admitting error or learning from it—is utterly disqualifying.

“His remarks about the Midwest, however, highlight more than his unsuitability for the Fed. They also provide an illustration of something I've been noticing for a while: The thinly veiled contempt conservative elites feel for the middle-American voters they depend on.” (2)

“This is not the story you usually hear”, notes Krugman. Indeed it is the liberals that are held to hold the heartland in contempt, a charge going back to the late sixties moniker “limousine liberal” and reinforced by “a story line pushed relentlessly by Fox News and other propaganda organizations, relying on out-of-context quotes and sheer fabrication.” (3) It is a charge that has become so pervasive that, noticed Krugman, the liberals themselves have come to believe it.

“Conservative contempt, by contrast, is real. Moore's 'armpit' line evidently didn't shock his audience, probably because disparaging view about middle America are widespread among right-wing intellectual and, more discreetly, right-wing politicians” (4)

Krugman makes it clear that the crisis is real. In what he calls the Eastern Heartland the very real social and economic crisis has translated persistently high unemployment “among working-age men” into “a surge in mortality from alcohol, suicide and opioids--'deaths of despair,' in the phrase of Anne Case and Angus Deaton.” (5) Indeed, comedian Bill Maher noted over a year ago the correlation of tRUMP support and areas of the country with the highest drug use.

Declining opportunities lead to social disruption as the metropolitan coasts are favored over rural America. One need look only to West Virginia, where disinvestment in the region has led to the highest opioid use in the country. A state that, like Alabama, gave tRUMP his highest majorities. Indeed, comedian Bill Maher noted over a year ago the correlation of tRUMP support and areas of the country with the highest drug use. It has come to this: it now takes the infusion of massive dose of opiates, along with fundamentalist religion and Faux News to hold up this “working class hero”; to mask the fraud that is our Caesar Disgustus and the ReSCUMlickan appeal to the working classes. We are still fucking peasants as far as they can see.

Incidentally Moore and Herman Cain have withdrawn their nominations to the Federal Reserve Board. Evidently Wall Street is beginning to fear the consequences of imposing ignorance on the system and vandalizing the financial system is apparently a bridge too far. When Smith-Blarney speaks even, it seems, this administration listens.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

______________

1. Krugman, Paul. “Armpits, White Ghettos And Contempt.” The New York Times. Friday, April 26, 2019. Page A27.
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Ibid
5. Ibid

May 3, 2019: No Smoking Gun, The Wrong Lesson Learned, Hansel And Gretel

So there is no “smoking gun.” At least according to Robert Mueller. A careful reading of his report, even the summary suggests otherwise, but that's not the way it is being presented to the country. So what you say? Much ado about nothing? Not quite.

A careful reading of the Mueller report reveals that the Special Council didn't cite Disgustus and his minions for conspiracy against the United States—so called “collusion” with the Russians—because the evidence wasn't, in his opinion, sufficient to rise to that level. The report tells us that the reasons he reached that conclusion were that witnesses have lied to authorities, many of their communications were in encrypted messages, many destroyed, many witnesses plead the fifth amendment, and many witnesses are foreign nationals beyond the reach of federal authority. Additionally, Mueller tells us that his office did not pursue all reported leads relating to Russian connection.

One suspects that the Special Council, himself a life-long employee of the F.B.I, as well as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, were more interested in protecting the agency than dealing with the more pressing national emergency that is the tRUMP 'presidency'.

Anyone viewing this from the outside would use the standard established by the late Senator Sam Irvin at the Watergate hearings. “If it looks like a horse, smells like a horse, walks like a horse, and eats hay then we can reasonably reach the conclusion that it's a horse.” So it is here.

Many have commented that another prosecutor could reach other conclusions based on the evidence. Mueller chose to apply the most stringent standards. The 'smoking gun'. In this case, a record of conversation or written understanding between the Russians and tRUMP establishing conspiracy, the absence of which leads to no charges.

But do we need a smoking gun?

Elizabeth Drew, long a reporter for The New Yorker who reported on the Watergate Scandal as it unfolded and who has written a book about it, tells us that our collective memory is faulty.

“Many people are getting their history and their definition of impeachment wrong by asserting that what forced Nixon to resign was the revelation in August, 1974, very late in the process, of a recording of his trying to obstruct Justice. This leads them to the erroneous conclusion that it's essential to find a 'smoking gun' to impeach a president.

“In fact, even before that tape was released, the House Judiciary Committee had already approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon. It was widely understood that opinion had moved so strongly against him that the House would approve those articles and the Senate would vote to convict Nixon on those grounds. The tape simply hastened the finale

“By far the most important article of impeachment approved by the House committee on a bipartisan basis was Article II, which called for the punishment of Nixon for abusing presidential power by using executive agencies (such as the Internal Revenue Service) to punish his enemies and for failing to uphold the oat of office to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed.' It also said, significantly, that a president could be held accountable for a pattern of abusive or even illegal behavior by his aides.” (1)

Then there is obstruction of justice. Mueller cites at least ten instances of obstruction but did not indict Disgustus because of Department of Justice guidelines barring the indictment of a sitting president.

Disgustus is, of course, doing a victory dance, claiming “no collusion, no obstruction” citing attorney general Barr's summary of 'no collusion' and making the completely bogus claim that since where was no 'crime' there can be no obstruction. But that's not what the report says.

Mueller has, like Hansel and Gretel, left many bread-crumbs to follow, in effect begging the Congress to act. “Mr. Mueller did not say that there had been no collusion, or conspiracy, or whatever between the Russian oligarchs and intelligence agents with ties to the Kremlin and members of the Trump campaign”, writes Drew, “in fact he traced considerable traffic, or what he called 'links' and 'contacts,' between them in some detail.” (2) Mueller simply hadn't found “some sort of specific agreement” between them. (3) The so-called smoking gun.

Mueller has yet to speak publicly about his report, but one suspects that he concluded that for legal action to be taken it must be preceded by the political remedy of impeachment. That was certainly the case when it came to obstruction of justice and, lacking the 'smoking gun' Mueller more than likely concluded that the evidence, such as it has been developed, is sufficient to warrant, at a minimum, a thorough congressional investigation.

There are many question hanging in the air. Why did he not follow Leon Jaworski's example of naming tRUMP and “unindicted co-conspirator”. Why did he not cite the tRUMP larvae for lying to Congress? These and other considerations beg the question: was he protecting his agency from the sure to follow wrath of Disgustus and his congressional enablers?

What is certain is that Disgustus has long since me the standards of impeachment and removal from office. What Drew is reminding us is that we need no smoking gun, no universally demonstrable 'proof' that he committed some heinous felony. As noted in many previous posts, impeachment is a political remedy to political crime—indeed the worst form of crime—assault against the greater society, the nation, the polis.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been working hard to keep her caucus in line, saying that talk of impeachment is premature and that, in any case, an election is around the corner. Then there is the “precedent” that to impeach and fail to convict in the Senate would set a terrible precedent.

But, as Elizabeth Drew points out, “Madison and Hamilton didn't say anything about holding off on impeachment because it would be politically risky. It's hard to imagine they'd put political convenience on the same footing as the security of the constitution. And the Democrats who prefer to substitute the 2020 election for an impeachment fight don't appear to have considered the implications if Mr. Trump were to win:Would that not condone his constitutional abuses and encourage his authoritarian instincts?” (4)

More than that, would not failure to impeach whether Disgustus wins or loses the next election, not set the awful precedent that there indeed must be some smoking gun in order to act?

We already have an attorney general who tells the House Judiciary Committee with a straight face that if the president thinks he is innocent that he can then close down any investigation, no matter what the evidence to the contrary may be, into his conduct.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison

_______________________

1. Drew, Elizabeth. “The Danger in Not Impeaching” The New York Times. Friday, April 26, 2019. Page A27
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Ibid

May 1, 2019: May Day, May Day, May Day

Thom Hartmann, writing for Salon, Takes attorney general William Barr to task, not over his ham-handed handling of the Mueller Report, but for his efforts to sweep the crimes of previous Republican administrations under the rug. Here then is the essay in its entirety:

“Bill Barr knows how to cover up the crimes of a Republican president. We know, because he’s done it before.

The week of Christmas, 1992, George H.W. Bush was on his way out of office. Bill Clinton had won the White House the month before, and in a few weeks would be sworn in as president.

But Bush’s biggest concern wasn’t that he’d have to leave the White House to retire back to Connecticut, Maine, or Texas (where he had homes) but, rather, that he might end up in a federal prison. Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh was closing in fast on him, and Bush’s 1986 diary was a key to it all.

Walsh had been appointed independent counsel in 1986, to investigate the Iran-Contra crimes of the Reagan administration.

Did the plot start in the spring of 1980 during the Reagan vs. Carter election, as a way of having the Iranians hold the hostages long enough to humiliate President Carter and cost him the election? Did Bill Casey do it all himself as campaign manager, or, like with Nixon in 1968, did the presidential candidate or his former-CIA chief VP candidate participate?

Iran’s president during the time of the hostage crisis, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, wrote for the Christian Science Monitor in 2013 that:

“Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the ‘October Surprise,’ which prevented the attempts by myself and then-US President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 US presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.”

Or was the Iran-Contra conspiracy limited, as Reagan and Bush insisted (and Reagan confessed on TV), to later years in the Reagan presidency, in response to a hostage-taking in Lebanon? Who knew what, and when?

Walsh had zeroed in on documents that were in the possession of Reagan’s former defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, who all the evidence showed was definitely in on the deal, and Bush’s diary that could corroborate it.

Weinberger was preparing to testify that Bush knew about it and even participated, and Walsh had already, based on information he’d obtained from the investigation into Weinberger, demanded that Bush turn over his diary from the campaign. Bush was panicked. And he only had three more weeks of safety in office.

So Bush called in his attorney general, Bill Barr, and asked his advice.

Barr, along with Bush, was already in trouble. The iconic New York Times writer William Safire referred to him not as “Attorney General” but, instead, as “Coverup-General,” noting that in another scandal — having to do with Bush selling weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein — Barr was already trying to cover up for both Bush, himself, and his friends.

On October 19, 1992, Safire wrote of Barr’s unwillingness to appoint an independent counsel to look into Iraqgate:

“Why does the Coverup-General resist independent investigation? Because he knows where it may lead: to Dick Thornburgh, James Baker, Clayton Yeutter, Brent Scowcroft and himself. He vainly hopes to be able to head it off, or at least be able to use the threat of firing to negotiate a deal.”

Now, just short of two months later, Bush was asking Barr for advice on how to avoid another very serious charge in the Iran-Contra crimes. How, he wanted to know, could they shut down Walsh’s investigation before Walsh’s lawyers got their hands on Bush’s diary?

In April of 2001, safely distant from the swirl of D.C. politics, the University of Virginia’s Miller Center was compiling oral presidential histories, and interviewed Barr about his time as AG in the Bush White House. They brought up the issue of the Weinberger pardon, and Barr’s involvement in it.

Turns out, Barr was right in the middle of it.

“There were some people arguing just for [a pardon for] Weinberger, and I said, ‘No, in for a penny, in for a pound,’” Barr told the interviewer. “I went over and told the President I thought he should not only pardon Caspar Weinberger, but while he was at it, he should pardon about five others.”

Which is exactly what Bush did, on Christmas Eve when most Americans weren’t checking the news. The holiday notwithstanding, the result was explosive.

America knew that both Reagan and Bush were up to their necks in the Iran-Contra crimes, and both could be facing prison time as a result. The independent counsel had already obtained one conviction and three guilty pleas, and two other individuals were lined up for prosecution. And Walsh was closing in fast on Bush himself.

So, when Bush shut the investigation down by pardoning not only Weinberger, but also the five others involved in the crime, destroying Walsh’s ability to prosecute anybody, the New York Times ran the headline all the way across four of the six columns on the front page, screaming in all-caps: BUSH PARDONS 6 IN IRAN AFFAIR, ABORTING A WEINBERGER TRIAL; PROSECUTOR ASSAILS ‘COVER-UP.’

Bill Barr had struck.

The second paragraph of the Times story by David Johnston laid it out:

“Mr. Weinberger was scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 5 on charges that he lied to Congress about his knowledge of the arms sales to Iran and efforts by other countries to help underwrite the Nicaraguan rebels, a case that was expected to focus on Mr. Weinberger’s private notes that contain references to Mr. Bush’s endorsement of the secret shipments to Iran.” (emphasis added)

When a Republican president is in serious legal trouble, Bill Barr is the go-to guy.

For William Safire, it was déjà vu all over again. Four months earlier, referring to what was then called Iraqgate (wherein Bush was selling WMDs to Iraq), Safire opened his article, titled “Justice [Department] Corrupts Justice,” by writing:

“U.S. Attorney General William Barr, in rejecting the House Judiciary Committee’s call for a prosecutor not beholden to the Bush Administration to investigate the crimes of Iraqgate, has taken personal charge of the cover-up.”

Safire accused Barr of not only rigging the cover-up, but of being one of the criminals who could be prosecuted. “Mr. Barr,” wrote Safire in August of 1992, “could face prosecution if it turns out that high Bush officials knew about Saddam Hussein’s perversion of our Agriculture export guarantees to finance his war machine.” He added, “They [Barr and colleagues] have a keen personal and political interest in seeing to it that the Department of Justice stays in safe, controllable Republican hands.”

In August and September, Barr had succeeded in blocking the appointment of an investigator or independent counsel to look into Iraqgate. In December, he helped Bush shoot down another independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh, and eliminated any risk that George H.W. Bush would be prosecuted for his Iran-Contra crimes.

Walsh, wrote Johnston for the Times on Christmas Eve, “plans to review a 1986 campaign diary kept by Mr. Bush.” The diary would be the smoking gun that would nail Bush to the crimes.

“But,” noted the Times, “in a single stroke, Mr. Bush swept away one conviction, three guilty pleas and two pending cases, virtually decapitating what was left of Mr. Walsh’s effort, which began in 1986.”

And Walsh didn’t take it lying down.

The Times report noted that, “Mr. Walsh bitterly condemned the President’s action, charging that ‘the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed.’”

Walsh added that the diary and notes he wanted to enter into a public trial of Weinberger represented, “evidence of a conspiracy among the highest ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public.”

Walsh had been fighting to get those documents ever since 1986, when he was appointed and Reagan still had two years left in office. Bush’s and Weinberger’s refusal to turn them over, Johnston noted in the Times, could have, in Walsh’s words, “forestalled impeachment proceedings against President Reagan” through a pattern of “deception and obstruction.”

Barr successfully helped Bush decapitate the investigation into that president’s crimes.

Will he use the same technique to protect Trump? (1)

Tonight MSNBC is reporting that Mueller wrote a memo to Barr complaining that he had materially misrepresented both the context and the conclusions of his findings. Barr is scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence committee on the morrow, but is refusing to appear before the Democratically led House Judiciary Committee where he is sure to face much closer scrutiny. Barr is objecting to Chairman Nadler's hiring of committee legal council who will be conducting the interrogation, as opposed to each of the members. This makes possible much more thorough questioning in that there won't be 5 minute limitations on members but rather the council will be able to ask questions uninterrupted and, therefore, will be able to follow up on his line of questioning, making evasion much more difficult. So far Barr is refusing to cooperate. A possible impeachment of the attorney general now in the works? It's May Day, once again, in Moscow.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

___________________

1. Hartmann, Thom Bill Barr—Coverup Artist. See: https://www.salon.com/2019/01/20/bill-barr-cover-up-artist_partner

April 30, 2019: Kakistocracy and Hackistocracy, Hucksters Over Experts, Manifestly-Flamoyantly Unqualified.

“It's no secret”, economist Paul Krugman observes, “That Donald Trump has appointed a lot of partisan, unqualified hacks to key policy positions.” (1)

In this, Krugman is joining the ranks of scores of reporters and millions of Americans in their ridicule of a man who once promised us that “Only the Best People” would be brought into our government.

Indeed, as Krugman notes, fellow Times contributor Gail Collins now annually asks readers to name the worst of the worst. She has introduced the equivalent of the late Senator William Proxmire's “Golden Fleece” award only this time the dubious honor is given to the most venal, corrupt, malignant or downright breathtakingly incompetent member of this maladministration. This year it went to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross who scores high on at least two of the aforementioned criteria.

But until recently, notes Krugman, “one agency had seemed immune to the continuing hack invasion: the Federal Reserve, the single institution most crucial to economic policymaking. Trump's Fed nominees, have, by and large, been sensible, respected economists. But all that changed last week, when Trump said he planned to nominate Stephen Moore for the Fed's Board of Governors.

“Moore is manifestly, flamboyantly, unqualified for the position. But there's a story here that goes deeper than Moore, or even Trump; it's about the whole G.O.P.'s preference for hucksters over experts, even partisan experts.

“About Moore: It goes almost without saying that he has been wrong about everything. I don't mean the occasional bad call, which all of us make. I mean a track record that includes predicting that George W. Bush's policies would produce a magnificent boom, Barack Obama's policies would lead to runaway inflation, tax cuts in Kansas would produce a 'near immediate' boost to the state's economy, and much more. And, of course, never an acknowledgment of error or reflection on why he got it wrong.

“Beyond that, Moore has a problem with facts. After printing a Moore op-ed in which all the key numbers were wrong, one editor vowed never to publish the man's work again. And a blizzard of factual errors is standard practice in his writing and speaking. It's actually hard to find cases where Moore got a fact right.(2)

So why Moore and why now? Krugman suggest that Disgustus' tax cut has proven itself a miserable failure and therefore someone or something must take the fall. In this case the Federal Reserve which tRUMP is now accusing of aborting his 'great recovery' by modestly raising interest rates. And so, the Federal Reserve now joins a long chorus of institution with whom our errant Caesar wages war. To that end he has appointed not only the intellectual vacuous Moore but the Pizza King Herman Cain. Cain, who at least served on a regional bank board has since demurred, claiming he would have to take a pay cut to serve. But the prospect of the kleig lights shining on Herman Cain is more likely the reason. Beyond mere sexual peccadillo, Cain would have to defend, while serving a chief of a restaurant lobbyist his adoption in the 1990's of Clinton's raise in the minimum wage in return for his industry not being effected. As a result he would have to explain to the nation his role in keeping restaurant workers minimum wage pegged at $2.30 an hour. Would he then apply the same rationales for Fed policy as it pertains to the money supply as it relates to labor? That is would he, like Greenspan before him, see any real rise in wages as a rationale for turning the screws down on the economy by raising the cost of money therefore increasing unemployment? More than likely, and such an explanation would quickly lay bare the fraud that is tRUMP when it comes to those who actually sweat at work.

In any case, one of the idiots has removed himself, for all the wrong reasons, from consideration. But the other—Moore--still stands. This is the same Stephen Moore who pioneered the “privatization” movement during the Reagan years.

Our Caesar Disgustus, the Great Vandal, knows nothing if not how to vandalize. By earning his wrath the Fed is now in the cross-hairs, and what better instrument than a man who apes so much of Disgustus himself. A man who has no relationship with fact or truth; a man who steadfastly refuses to recognize failure, much less take responsibility for it; a man of unwarranted confidence posturing as an 'expert' upon the stage.

We shall see, when confronted with imposing ignorance on the handling of high finance, how the moneyed interests respond. Will Wall Street, seeing a dunce at the helm, finally recognize that he now threatens the value of money itself, that he is a clear and present danger to everything the stock-jobbing, blood-sucking parasites hold dear?

The worm turns and the nation groans.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”.

Impeach and Imprison.

___________

1. Krugman, Paul. “Trump's Kakistocracy Is Also a Hackistocracy” The New York Times. Tuesday, March 26, 2019. Page A22
2. Ibid.