More Rational Than Assumed

Shortly after Donald Trump was defeated by Joe Biden, The New York Times reported

Since Mr. Trump dismissed Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and other top Pentagon aides last week, Defense Department and other national security officials have privately expressed worries that the president might initiate operations, whether overt or secret, against Iran or other adversaries at the end of his term.

A range of senior advisers dissuaded the president from moving ahead with a military strike.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post revealed

Fearful of Donald Trump’s actions in his final weeks as president, the United States’ top military officer twice called his Chinese counterpart to assure him that the two nations would not suddenly go to war, a senior defense official said Tuesday after the conversations were described in excerpts from a forthcoming book....

According to the defense official, Milley’s message to Li on both occasions was one of reassurance. The official questioned suggestions that Milley told Li he would call him first, and instead said the chairman made the point that the United States was not going to suddenly attack China without any warning — whether it be through diplomatic, administrative or military channels.

Milley also spoke with a number of other chiefs of defense around the world in the days after the Jan. 6 riot, including military leaders from the United Kingdom, Russia and Pakistan. A readout of those calls in January referred to “several” other counterparts that he spoke to with similar messages of reassurance that the U.S. government was strong and in control.

The second call was meant to placate Chinese fears about the events of Jan. 6. But the book reports that Li wasn’t as easily assuaged, even after Milley promised him: “We are 100 percent steady. Everything’s fine. But democracy can be sloppy sometimes.”

Trump responded Tuesday with a sharply worded statement dismissing Milley as a “Dumbass,” and insisting he never considered attacking China.

Although, considering the source, the latter statement is of dubious validity, it might not be far off.  At about the same time General Milley was worried about an attack upon mainland China, according to the Post, President Trump "asked senior advisers in an Oval Office meeting"

whether he had options to take action against Iran’s main nuclear site in the coming weeks. The meeting occurred a day after international inspectors reported a significant increase in the country’s stockpile of nuclear material, four current and former U.S. officials said on Monday.

A range of senior advisers dissuaded the president from moving ahead with a military strike.

So there was real fear that in the lame duck period, the President would launch a military strike upon one country or another.  Milley called Beijing after speaking to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who reportedly had told him "He's crazy. You know he's crazy."

However, Trump did not order an attack upon Iran, mainland China, or any nation while he was intent on remaining in office by preventing certification of the electoral votes. On January 5, he had told Pence “No, no, no! You don't understand, Mike. You can do this. I don't want to be your friend anymore if you don't do this”. On January 6 he rallied his supporters massed in Washington, using the word "peacefully" once and "fight" or "fighting" ten times.  He tweeted at Pence during the insurrection, describing it as a "time for extreme courage," for overturning the results of the election.

This is not how "crazy" behaves.  This is someone who accrued as much power as possible by shattering whatever laws and norms he could, monetized the presidency, and schemed to remain in power so he could escape the (otherwise) long arm of the law.  For the most part, he is a rational man and, far more thoroughly, an evil one.

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Blue Lives, Black Lives, No Lives

Last September, an outfit obviously supportive of the summer's protests against abusive policing of the black community noted "Black Lives Matter is a peaceful movement working to recognize the importance of the lives of Black Americans and fight for racial justice and equality." It added

Similar to All Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter is often used in contrast or as an argument to Black Lives Matter. The Black Lives Matter movement is not saying that the lives of police officers (or firefighters) are not as important as Black citizens. The goal is equality. Police officer’s lives matter and Black lives matter.  Police departments provide valuable and often dangerous services to our communities and in our country. Black Lives Matter is not anti-police, but police reform is a significant element in the movement....

This was a common view at the time, popular and wrong.

Equality arguably was (and is) the goal of the black lives matter movement, apart from the organization with the same name. However, the Black Lives Matter organization was anti-police and probably still is, though its website has been scrubbed of its most radical elements.

The discrepancy between the group and its millions of followers is one of the major misunderstandings of last summer's protests. Another is "police officers' lives matter." We learn

According to a Stars and Stripes article, in the first half of 2021, 71 U.S. law enforcement officers died from COVID-19, which is just under the 76 that died during the same period in 2020. In all of 2020, 241 U.S. law enforcement officers died from COVID-19. A study by Case Western Reserve University supports the article, showing more active-duty officers died from the virus last year than from all other causes combined.

Despite the number of COVID-19 deaths and cases within law enforcement ranks, police officers and departments have largely avoided the vaccine. There are currently no statistics showing the national vaccination rate for law enforcement officers; however, individual police and fire departments across the country show vaccination rates far below the national rate of 74% of adults who have had at least one dose.

Across the country, police unions are fighting mandates from municipal governments that cops be vaccinated. They're not endangering blacks. They're not endangering whites, Asians, Latinos, or members of specific ethnic groups. They are risking the lives of all the citizens whom they purport to protect and serve. And they are endangering themselves. Fifteen months after the murder of a black man lit the fuse of the black lives matter movement, neither black lives nor blue lives matter much at all.

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A Lovely Gang

If even a stopped clock is right twice a day, even a wise tweeter- as this fellow is- can be palpably wrong once in a while:

That the USA might not—ever—recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan is frankly ridiculous.

— Pé (@4everNeverTrump) September 13, 2021

 

This is merely one reason recognition is currently inconceivable:

 

It's not as if the Taliban are opposed to all protest marches. Some they zealously guard.

Afghan women at a pro-Taliban protest on 9/11 wore full burkas and shouted “death to America” as they marched with Taliban fighters standing guard. pic.twitter.com/S8XwwH6wo7

— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 11, 2021

 

Afghan women at a pro-Taliban protest on 9/11 wore full burkas and shouted “death to America” as they marched with Taliban fighters standing guard.

Was the selection of a date unintentional- or did the Taliban figure "9/11" was a nice touch?  Business Insider last week reported

The Taliban on Tuesday announced an interim government in Afghanistan that excludes women and includes the head of a militant group who's wanted by the FBI.

Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, one of the Taliban's founders, was named prime minister. He's on a United Nations blacklist.....

The Taliban named Sirajuddin Haqqani interior minister. Haqqani is the head of the Haqqani Network — a US-designated terror group in Pakistan and Afghanistan with close ties to al-Qaida — and there's a $10 million US bounty on his head.

The FBI's most wanted list says Haqqani is wanted for "questioning in connection with the January 2008 attack on a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed six people, including an American citizen."

Sweethearts, all of them.  Times change, people change, regimes change, and the Taliban- along with Al Qaeda- is hostile toward ISIS-K. However, sometimes the enemy of our enemy is not our friend and for the foreseeable future, the theocratic fascists in Kabul cannot be recognized as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

 

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Tweet Of The Day- Constitutional Values

Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas criticizes his own party's supporters:

 

wait until he hears about Republicans https://t.co/deGBggs9Hm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 11, 2021

For the record: Cotton released a statement on January 6 reading in part "It’s past time for the president to accept the results of the election, quit misleading the American people, and repudiate mob violence";  He voted for the counting of electoral votes from both Arizona and Pennsylvania in the 2020 presidential election;  against allowing the February, 2021 impeachment trial in the Senate of Donald Trump to proceed; in favor of acquitting at trial former President Trump of aiding the 1/6/01 attempted coup; against creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the 1/6 uprising. (In each, Cotton joined a majority of his GOP colleagues.)

But it's not only the insurrectionists of January  6 who apparently won't "accept our way of life here in terms of constitutional government."  One question asked of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents in a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS was "how important is each of the following to what being a Republican means to you?" "Believing that Donald Trump won the 2020 election" was "very important" to 35% of respondents and "somewhat important" to 23% of respondents.

These Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents are entitled to oppose free and fair elections. But they have no claim on "accepting our way of life here in terms of constitutional government." Maybe Tom Cotton should have a word with some of his constituents.

 

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Tweet Of The Day- Following Lawful Orders

Servicemen and servicewomen are not like the rest of us. 

They- and usually their family members- have health benefits, life insurance, and education assistance superior to most of the general public. Additionally, they possess the honor of often being told "thank you for your service."

All such benefits, most if not all justified, come with a price.  Members of the military voluntarily subject themselves to a highly regimented lifestyle and chain of command that extends upward to the Secretary of Defense. He is in turn an appointee, and at-will employee, of the President of the USA, commander-in-chief of the armed forces when they are called into service of the nation.

And so a sarcastic Chris Hayes gets it exactly right:

Yes there is nothing more outrageous, more anathema to freedom and out traditions than for members of the military to be given commands. What have we come to? https://t.co/8SnibaCQsr

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 10, 2021

Yes there is nothing more outrageous, more anathema to freedom and out traditions than for members of the military to be given commands. What have we come to

This fellow refers to President Biden as "this idiot who's in office." This "idiot" is proposing a budget with a 2.7% pay raise for active military personnel, for whom this critic professes support

There is an old saying that there are only two sure things in life, death and taxes. But there is at least four- an increase in the military budget and people with a dangerous notion of freedom.. 

 

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Take Them Down

Responding to a plea by Democratic governor Ralph Northam in the summer of 2020

A crowd erupted in cheers and song Wednesday as work crews hoisted an enormous statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee off the pedestal where it has towered over Virginia’s capital city for more than a century.

One of America’s largest monuments to the Confederacy, the equestrian statue was lowered to the ground just before 9 a.m., after a construction worker who strapped harnesses around Lee and his horse lifted his arms in the air and counted, “Three, two, one!” to jubilant shouts from a crowd of hundreds. A work crew then began cutting it into pieces....

Some chanted “Whose streets? Our streets!" and sang, “Hey hey hey, goodbye.” One man with a Black Lives Matter flag was escorted out by police after running into the fenced-off work area. No arrests were reported, and there was no sign of a counter protest.

Say what you wish about the right wing- and there is much negative to be said- it generally has its priorities in order, recognizing what is, and is not, important.

Removal of the statue reflects positively on the state of Virginia. But it is a relatively insignificant action because it reflects on, and affects only, one state and its residents.  At roughly the same time that Northam first raised the issue in his own state, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill

that would remove Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol as well as a bust of the former Supreme Court chief justice who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision that denied enslaved people the right to be citizens.

"This sacred space, this temple of democracy has been defiled for too long. We ought not to forget history. We must learn from history. But we ought not to honor that which defiles the principles for which we ... stand," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said on the House floor before the vote. "It's time to remove those symbols of slavery, segregation and sedition from these halls."

The bill passed by a vote of 285 to 120. Every Democrat present and 67 Republicans voted for it. The bill heads to the Senate for consideration, where it would need 10 Republican senators to join every Democrat to pass the upper chamber.

Democrats in the Senate soon afterward introduced their own bill to remove the statues but it has not been voted upon by the upper chamber.

The State of Virginia has removed an important symbol of treason and slavery from its prominent place.  A blight has been removed from the capital of the Confederacy.

Meanwhile, similar statues remain in the United States Capitol, which is the seat of the government of the most powerful nation in the world. There, though donated by individual states, they represent the people of the United States of America, you and me and over 300 million other Americans.

They've done the right thing in the heart of the Confederacy. In the seat of democratic government of the entire nation, fifteen(15) statues honoring slavery and treason remain.

In the 2016 election, many conservatives had their eye on the US Supreme Court when they came out to vote for Donald Trump and were rewarded with three appointments to the High Court. Many liberals and progressives voted for Democrats down ballot while declining to cast a vote for President.  Democrats emphasize the presidency to the exclusion of various other important contests, in the US House, the US Senate, and state legislatures. Republicans make no such mistake.

In Richmond on Wednesday, "there was no sign of a counter protest." Nor should there have been- not only because the Lee statue needed to come down but, in the larger scope of things, its removal is of only passing significance.

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Profiles In Cowardice

Last week, by a vote of 5 to 4, the US Supreme Court refused to enjoin legislation in Texas promoting forced-birth.  As The New York Times points out

The law, known as Senate Bill 8,  and referred to as “the heartbeat bill,” prohibits abortions at about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women are even aware they are pregnant. But there is no heart at this stage of development, only electrical activity in developing cells. The heart is not fully formed until later in pregnancy.

And there is no exception for pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, acts now condoned by the self-anointed anti-crime Republican Party. Most glaringly and consciously, framers of the legislation left enforcement to private citizens, understood as vigilantes. Additionally, there is no exception for pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. The Republican Party, typically posing as the anti-crime party, seems rather unconcerned about the victims of violent crime.

The hypocrisy doesn't end there.  The Texas Tribune explains

Republican lawmakers’ move to ban nearly all abortions in Texas was accomplished through a huge, unprecedented expansion of who can bring a lawsuit against someone else: Under the law, anyone can sue anyone who performs, aids or intends to aid in an abortion — regardless of whether they have a personal stake in the abortion performed.

“It’s wide open,” said David Coal​​e, an appellate lawyer in Texas. “That is a radical expansion of the concept of standing.”

The expansion has far-reaching legal implications, legal experts say, by challenging the very notion of what a court is for and emboldening civilians to enforce law, a duty traditionally left to the government. It’s also a reversal by Texas Republicans on tort law, in which they have typically sought to limit the ability to sue, not expand it.

You don't have to be approaching Social Security age or AARP age to remember the days when Republicans, not only in Texas but elsewhere, waxed indignant over what they claimed was an overly litigious culture. 

But in one important instance, the anti-abortion rights community has remained true to form. Anyone can sue anyone who performs, aids or intends to aid in an abortion.

Performs, aids, or intends to aid in an abortion. Excluded in the forced-birth jihad is the individual who initiates, requests, and pays for the termination of pregnancy. 

That would be the woman, to whom the State of Texas denies agency; the woman, who is held blameless while anyone and everyone, from the doctor to the unsuspecting Uber driver who transports her to the site of an abortion, can be successfully sued; the woman, who- if we are to believe supporters of the law- has asked that her baby be killed.

It's only fitting, albeit inappropriate and cowardly, that the opinion was unsigned.  It was a cowardly approach to condoning a law passed by cowardly legislators to please a cowardly movement of forced-birth activists. 

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