Yearning

What do the 18th and 45th presidents of the United States of America have in common? Donald J. Trump has not been arrested or indicted- yet. However, President Ulysses S. Grant was arrested by a police officer named William H. West, who prior to joining the Washington, D.C. police force had fought in the Civil War and prior to that, had been a slave.

West stopped the incumbent president two straight evenings for speeding in on the streets of Washington, D.C. in his horse-drawn carriage. The second time he was arrested, then released after posting a $50 bond.

In what seemingly, but mistakenly, appears to be a completely unrelated matter, , Steve M. notes that the anti-Trump fight has sometimes been framed as an expression, which is "odd"

because in America it's never considered patriotic to challenge the Republican Party. Ever since 1968, or maybe 1964, or maybe the McCarthy Era, it's been an article of faith in Heartland America that the GOP is the party of patriotism and its opponents are all dissenters and rootless cosmopolitans, if not outright traitors. Right now, the Democrats, anti-Trump Republicans, and non-political investigators seeking to bring Trump to justice really are the patriots -- but much of the country doesn't believe that, and never will. It ought to be the case that Trump's opponents are seen now as the people with the monopoly on patriotism -- but I think the exact opposite is still closer to our political reality. That's why The New York Times keeps interviewing all those old white men in Pennsylvania diners. It's why so much of the political press is concerned about the fate of The Weekly Standard and the possibility of a 2020 primary challenge to Trump. They're rooting for a revival of the American party, as they see it -- the GOP.

As insightful as this is, there is another reason that white people (not only men) are being interviewed in diners in "heartland" (not only Pennsylvania) states. (I know, I know: SM is using old white men in Pennsylvania diners as a metaphor.)  They are rooting for the revival of not only the myth of the GOP as the patriotic party, but also in revival of the myth of the concept of the rule of law.

When President Nixon decided to resign his office rather than face nearly inevitable impeachment and probable removal by the Senate from the presidency, there were sighs of relief across the Establishment. Nixon had "spared" the country the agony of impeachment proceedings and the rule of law had been upheld in a nation of laws, not of men.

In reality, of course, the failure to charge Nixon with obstruction of justice (or any other offense) during or after his presidency demonstrated that the President is above the law and that this is a nation of men, and not of laws. Similarly, the dominant (though by no means unanimous) view currently is that a sitting President cannot be indicted. Surely, he can be indicted after leaving office- if not first pardoned by the president who succeeds him.

In the last of a series of tweets which included a link to the 1908 Washington Post article aboutGrant's arrest, Yoni Applebaum remarks

7. Think about that. An enslaved man enlisted; fought in the Battle of the Crater; joined the police; and arrested a sitting president—who defended him for doing his job, and paid his speeding fine. That’s what it means that we live in a country subject to the rule of law.

— Yoni Appelbaum (@YAppelbaum) December 16, 2018

There was no arrest warrant issued for Grant, as there typically would be for a black man- or a white man,or any woman- who decides to blow off his court appearance. He did not appear in court and merely forfeited his bond.

Grant's transgression was merely speeding- not obstruction of justice, conspiracy, or any one of a number of financial crimes that Donald J. Trump may have committed before he was elected. However, the slap on the wrist for Ulysses S. Grant surely was not a triumph of the rule of law, and neither will it be if the law does not go where the facts are on the sitting President.

Those god-fearing, down-to-earth Trump voters* are interviewed in part, as Steve M argues, because many members of the Establishment (Doris Kearns Goodwin included, below) are pining for return of the American party. They also hope to announce the triumph of the rule of law, if Donald Trump resigns his office or is even merely defeated in 2020, even if crimes uncovered go unpunished.

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Outplayed

That warm, fuzzy feeling has taken over the government of Atlanta, Georgia.

The leftist Rewire.News reports

After a years-long grassroots campaign documenting ICE’s human rights violations in the jail, Atlanta finally ended the contract in September, realizing that it could not call itself a “welcoming city” while profiting from immigrants’ pain. As we showed in our report “Inside Atlanta’s Immigrant Cages,” scores of immigrants detained at the Atlanta City Detention Center experienced or observed human rights violations, including solitary confinement for arbitrary reasons; grossly inadequate medical and mental health care; an uncompensated labor program; intimidation and threats by the guards; extremely poor-quality food; and sexual assault.

“Atlanta will no longer be complicit in a policy that intentionally inflicts misery on a vulnerable population without giving any thought to the horrific fallout,” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said before signing the executive order ending the city’s dealings with ICE. “As the birthplace of the civil rights movement, we are called to be better than this.”

Two months earlier in an Executive Order signed by Bottoms, the city formally ended its agreement with the US Marshals Service to accept detainees from ICE, three months after its new police had been announced.

The city of Atlanta could have considered demanding an end to solitary confinement for arbitrary reasons and to unpaid labor; improvement of medical care; improving the quality of food; additional training and/or personnel to counter intimidation and threats by the guards.

But no, Atlanta is a "welcoming city.  The federal government did not respond by finding more humane facilities in which to house illegal immigrants nor to detain fewer.

Uh-uh. Instead, ICE

turned elsewhere to continue feeding the detention machine. In August, the agency started detaining immigrants at the Robert A. Deyton Detention Facility in Lovejoy; we learned about this in October, not through an announcement by ICE, but by happenstance. The facility is owned by Clayton County, roughly 25 minutes away from the Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The private prison corporation GEO Group leases the facility from Clayton and runs it through a contract with the U.S. Department of Justice.

The GEO Group’s detention centers have a well-documented track record of human rights violations, including lack of medical and mental health care; arbitrary solitary confinement; denial of basic hygiene products; and moldy and inedible food. Due to these horrid conditions, death, suicide, and attempted suicide are all too common in GEO-run facilities such as the Adelanto Detention Facility in California,LaSalle Detention Facility in Louisiana, Denver Contract Detention Facility, and South Texas Detention Complex.

The Robert A. Deyton Detention Center is no different, according to the detained immigrants we have spoken to as part of our work with the social-justice organization Project South. They tell us that the food is inedible, they are yelled at and cursed at by the officers, and they are put on lockdown for many hours straight.

In addition, there is inadequate medical, dental, and mental health care.

Motivated by altruistic sentiments, the city has now done its share in expanding the carceral state. GEO probably will do its part in jamming as many detainees as possible into the Deyton Detention Center.

Atlanta also has struck a blow into the idea, which took root in the Reagan Administration, that government has no role in improving the lives of its residents. Since then, a wide array of services in local, state, and national governments has been privatized, to the detriment of both consumers and taxpayers, in the mistaken notion that government is incapable of anything and must be rescued by the market.

There may be a silver lining to the action(s) taken by Mayor Bottoms.  Attention may be paid to the increasing number of inmates housed in private prisons under President Trump. If so, congressional Democrats may come to realize that criminal justice reform measures in the manner of the First Step Act are at best very modest. If not, at least Atlanta can bask in the warm glow of feeling, however inaccurately, that it has done something for immigrants.

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Unverified And Unrefuted Allegation

Maybe he's just exaggerating for the yucks.

Not Tony Schwartz, who is deadly serious, earnest, and clearly feeling the guilt everyone who had anything to do with the rise of businessman/entrepreneur Donald J. Trump should have, but doesn't.  In January, Schwartz wrote for The Guardian

Looking back, I also hear the plaintive wail of a desperate child who believes he is alone in the world with no one to care for him. “I alone can do it” is Trump’s survival response to: “I must do it all alone.”

There are two Trumps. The one he presents to the world is all bluster, bullying and certainty. The other, which I have long felt haunts his inner world, is the frightened child of a relentlessly critical and bullying father and a distant and disengaged mother who couldn’t or wouldn’t protect him

“That’s why I’m so screwed up, because I had a father who pushed me so hard,” Trump acknowledged in 2007, in a brief and rare moment of self-awareness.

I doubt the significance of this psychological profile, though Trump obviously is a phony, mostly bluff and bluster. However, it is probably not the motivating factor in his behavior.

By contrast, information which may very well be out-of-date and (far less likely) completely false is exceedingly pertinent. Perhaps he was simply exaggerating for the benefit of his stand-up routine but Neil Casler, a former staff on The Apprentice, claimed on December 1

I'll tell you one more thing I don't usually tell- I'll tell you two things since you're being so nice to me.

He's a speed freak. He crushes up his Adderall and he sniffs it because he can't read and he gets really nervous when he has to read cue cards. I'm not kidding. This is true. I had a 24-page NDA, a non-disclosure agreement. I didn't know that he was going to become the President. Now, no way, dumbass, I'm telling everything I know.

So he gets nervous and he crushes up these pills. That's why he sniffs when you see him in debates and when you see him reading, that's why he's tweeting- you know, it's like he's out of his mind. 

It makes sense if you think about it. Methamphetamine was invented by the Nazis to keep fighter pilots awake all night on bombing runs. Right?  It makes sense that Trump would use it to hate-tweet in his self-centered ways at four a.m. on the toilet.

Questions for Mr. Casler abound about Trump's alleged use of the drug. At what times and during what period did Trump use? How did he react to sniffing it and how did he behave otherwise? Were other individuals aware of the habit? Did the star try to hide its use? Were non-disclosure agreements the only reason no one else has spoken out about this? Had Casler spoken to anyone else about this- or did he hear anything further about it since he worked on The Apprentice? Does Casler believe Mr. Trump still uses the drug- why or why not?

The accusation should not simply lay out in public, unconfirmed, even unexamined. Most likely, Mr. Casler either is lying- or we have a President who was once (possibly still) a drug addict. As with Donald Trump's lies to the public about his financial involvement with Russians, it is conceivable that the President is being blackmailed. If this story is ignored by the mainstream media, it is a colossal case of journalistic malpractice.

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Betting On Stupidity

Welcome to reality, Ann Coulter.

Of course, the conservative author's reacquaintance with reality won't last long, but on Tuesday she did acknowledge

Even a Washington Post reporter knows that not 1 inch of Trump's wall has been built. Does Trump think his supporters are dumber than a WaPo reporter? https://t.co/iCbior7yFp

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) December 11, 2018

In Trump's behalf (in this context)- or in his disgrace- he is still trying to obtain congressional approval for funding of a wall on the southern border. Thus, there are even stronger indications that, yes, Donald Trump believes his supporters just fell off a turnip truck.

In interviews with Sean Hannity on February 22 and April 4, 2006, according to Politifact, Donald Trump stated

It can be done. ... It will take place and it will go relatively quickly.  ... If you have the right people, like, in the agencies and the various people that do the balancing ... you can cut the numbers by two pennies and three pennies and balance a budget quickly and have a stronger and better country.

However, President Trump has done the reverse and

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the preliminary federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2018 was $782 billion. That was $116 billion more than the $666 billion shortfall in fiscal year 2017.

And the most recent CBO projection for fiscal year 2019 shows a deficit of $981 billion. Each year from 2020 to 2028, the CBO projected, the deficit would top $1 trillion annually.

This state of affairs was not divorced from actions taken by Trump himself, analysts say.

The two biggest drivers of the projected increase in the 2019 deficit were the Republican tax bill and the bipartisan agreement on federal spending, both of which Trump signed.

Similarly, in an interview with The Washington Post on March 31, 2016, candidate Trump remarked "We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt. ... Well, I would say over a period of eight years. And I’ll tell you why.”  However, the accumulated public debt was projected earlier this year to rise from 76.5% of GDP in 2017 to 96.2% of GDP at the end of 2028.

When candidate Trump said that he would reduce the debt and deficits, he calculated that voters wouldn't catch on till after he was elected, if at all.  He has won that debt; uh, er, bet.

Similarly, Trump continues denigrating Christianity as much as possible, wondering when his supporters will catch on. "Two Corinthians" instead of "Second Corinthians;"  referring to "my little cracker (and) little cup of wine; grossly misrepresenting the significance of communion; putting money into the communion plate; confessing he never feels a need to confess.

And now this: asked as Thanksgiving approached what he's most thankful for, the President might have said for "God's grace" or "the love of God for us all," or "living in the greatest country ever."

"God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble," James wrote. Therefore (and not however), after unremarkably replying "for having a great family," he added "and having made a tremendous difference in this country."

The oft-offensive and consistently far-right Ann Coulter will not change her ideological outlook nor her perverted perception of Washington Post reporters. However, she now realizes that they've been had. She recognizes that Donald J. Trump believes that his supporters are really, really dumb. And he's out to prove it.

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"I Am Woman, Hear Me Whimper"

The chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, is a proud woman and proud feminist. Or at least she wants us to think so, because Tuesday we read in Politico

Speaking during POLITICO's Women Rule Summit, McDaniel said the party needs to look into why many white suburban female voters — a traditionally solidly Republican group — switched to Democratic candidates during the midterms.

"Of course, we have to look at why we’re losing with women," McDaniel said. "I’m a woman. I want to know that, too. I don’t think we’re a monolithic group. I don’t like that"....

Describing her own experience leading up to serving as the second female chair in the history of the Republican National Committee, McDaniel said she often felt excluded from discussions with donors because of her gender. She said when she was chair of the Michigan GOP, she was called a kindergartner and laughed out of talks with potential donors. But "you don’t give up, and I got money from that person," she said....

McDaniel herself felt similar hesitancy when tapped by Reince Priebus to run for party chairwoman, but she ran and became one of the most successful fundraisers in the party's history.

“I’m the classic 60 percent qualified apply for the job," she said. "I did what the men did.”

Well, not exactly.  She did as men would not do. Fourteen months after Ronna accep;ted the job as party chairman, The New York Times' Jeremy Peters reported in January that she

tried to leave little doubt about where her loyalty lies. She even stopped using her full name — Ronna Romney McDaniel — professionally after the president joked with her and her husband about dropping her given surname.

“You know the job you’re signing up for,” she said in an interview one recent morning at a diner near her home, referring obliquely to the fact that committee leaders typically have to toe the president’s line when their party holds the White House.

And she has indeed been highly deferential. She fell in line after Mr. Trump insisted last month that the Republican National Committee put resources back into the Senate race in Alabama to aid Roy S. Moore, who had been accused of preying on girls as young as 14.

Alabama rejected Mr. Moore and elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in a generation. But even now, Ms. McDaniel will not say whether she believes the committee’s move was a mistake. “I understand why the president did what he did,” she said. “He wants to keep that majority.”

Of course she would not say whether throwing a lot of money into electing a Republican in Alabama, where Republicans almost never lose, was a mistake. We should have expected no less, or perhaps no more, from a woman who changed her identity because Big Daddy Trump asked.

Upon getting married, a woman obviously faces a challenge a man doesn't. She can change her maiden name to her husband's surname, retain her birth name, or opt for a combination, using both last names, with or without a hyphen.

After marrying Mitt Romney's older brother, Ronna faced that challenge. She decided, out of familial pride or ambition, to retain the Romney name while assuming the name "McDaniel," thereby assuring the family that once prided itself on "family values" that, yes, she must be a traditional woman because got married.

But then the libertine Donald J. Trump, conqueror of Playboy models, pornographic actresses, fashion models, and all manner of women in the fast lane, took over that Party. And Ronna Romney McDaniel became "Ronna McDaniel" because Donald Trump wanted to stick it to Mitt Romney, and doing it to his niece seemed a fine way. "Well, first of all, I look atDonald Trump as a champion of women" sealed the deal. Take that, Mitt.

As with any woman, Ronna Romney McDaniel can identify in any manner she wishes and if it is as "Ronna McDaniel," best wishes.  However, if she had a little backbone, she would own it. "I did what the men did" is a little rich.

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Little Sound And Fury, Probably Signifying Less

In an op-ed Monday in The Washington Post, forty-four former United States senators, most Democratic but many Republican (and Independents Joe Lieberman and Lowell Weicker), wrote

.... it is our shared view that we are entering a dangerous period, and we feel an obligation to speak up about serious challenges to the rule of law, the Constitution, our governing institutions and our national security.

Appearing on Cuomo Prime Time with former Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm, Rick Santorum commented (beginning at 17:33 of the video below)

What does this letter really say? I mean, it looks like a letter that was put together or the idea was for the Senate to go after Trump. But it looks like a letter that was put together by committee. They couldn't really come up with anything other than stand for God and country but it says nothing so I don't know what this is really all about. Is it a missive to say this is sort of a wink and a nod vote for impeachment when I think there isn't any realistic possibility that will occur in the next two years? I have no idea what the letter is all about.

That makes two of us. Impeachment, as Santorum undoubtedly knows and understands, takes place in the House. Therefore, even though there is a realistic possibility of impeachment because the House will be controlled by Democrats, the letter has nothing to do with impeachment. It may, instead, be an effort by these Republicans and Democrats, most of whom had a reputation for ideological moderation and/or bipartisanship, to put themselves on the right side of history.  

Additionally, the letter's authors may be big-timing the House, suggesting that Senators are superior to Representatives. "At other critical moments in our history," they write, "when constitutional crises have threatened our foundations, it has been the Senate that has stood in defense of our democracy."

In a mere ten sentences, the writers have stood for nothing except, as Santorum noted, God and country, or perhaps puppies and motherhood. Alternatively, they have done something worse, sending mixed signals.

The music is "sort of a wink and nod vote for impeachment," weak tea, especially because the Senate has nothing directly to do with that act, which approximates an indictment. However, the lyrics go in the opposite direction. 

"We are on the eve of the conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation," the Senators write, a dubious claim arguably intended to push for a conclusion of the investigation. This is similar to the periodic leaks, probably coming from the Trump-Giuliani, camp, that Mueller is about to wrap up his investigation. 

If not from a committee, it might as well have come from one. This letter adds nothing to nothing, playing no role in emboldening GOP senators (or Representatives), who have been, and will remain for awhile, no bolder than an inanimate object. The following morning on the same network, Jeffrey Toobin remarked

I think the Republican Party as s a group, and certainly it’s true for members of the Senate, have said, made a collective decision, that "we’re not gonna change our minds about anything until all of these developments are wrapped up, until there is a Mueller report and then we have to decide whether to throw Donald Trump over the side."

I think that is very unlikely. The Republican Party, as John Boehner said not long ago, is the Trump party today and they are going down with the ship, if the ship is going down.  I think, if you look at Donald Trump’s popularity within the Republican Party, within the voters, it’s still very high. And the Republican politicians are following along.

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Same 'Ol Joe

Hopefully, he has two left feet because

Joe Biden on Sunday waltzed into the backyard of potential future opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders sounding an awful lot like a 2020 candidate.

Six days after saying he's “the most qualified person in the country to be president,” Biden took the stage here and railed against “naked nationalism,” “phony populism” and a GOP that is “not your father’s Republican Party.”

“If you have a problem, what’s the problem? The other. The other. That immigrant, that black guy, that woman,” he said of populism, without mentioning President Donald Trump by name. “That’s the problem, instead of facing up to the problem called greed.”

Without mentioning Donald Trump by name.  That is, has been, and probably always been Joe Biden's problem.  In September, Amanda Terkel reminded us that Anita 

 Hill’s allegations became public just days before the Senate was set to vote on Thomas’ confirmation. Biden initially wanted to delay the vote by two weeks, but a GOP senator who was a Thomas supporter convinced him that fairness demanded the proceedings move faster.

Biden scheduled Hill’s testimony for Oct. 11, and agreed that the Judiciary Committee would not take another vote before sending Thomas to the full Senate on Oct. 15 ― a one-week delay. He also said he would keep questions about Thomas’ general sexual conduct ― such as his interest in pornography ― out of the hearings.

“Joe bent over too far to accommodate the Republicans, who were going to get Thomas on the court come hell or high water,” Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) told Mayer and Abramson.

Biden also handed a major victory to Republicans in agreeing to let Thomas testify both before and after Hill ― most crucially, scheduling his response to her allegations for 9 p.m. on a Friday, when millions of people were tuned in for their prime-time broadcast. 

In the end, Biden voted against Thomas. But when he did so, he said on the Senate floor, “For this senator, there is no question with respect to the nominee’s character.”

Even now, Biden can muster only a "The message I’ve delivered before is I am so sorry if she believes that. I am so sorry that she had to go through what she went through. Think of the courage that it took for her to come forward.” "Twas a shame," he says, but don't look at me."

The problem, amnesiac Joe Biden claims, is that this is "not your father's Republican Party."

It is your father's Republican Party. But accepting the former vice-president's short-sightedness, there still is a contradiction in his approach.  Donald Trump, not the GOP, is the outrage in Biden's view. Yet, he still won't mention the fellow's name.

That is Joe Biden's failure now. It was his failure roughly thirty years later. The Republican Party means well, he believes. And evidence indicates that when it doesn't, he believes Democrats can lead with a compromise and be willing to compromise off the compromise.  Even half a loaf isn't necessary; two slices are all which are needed for a sandwich.

The Democratic Party's "go along to get along approach," nearly perfected in the 2001-2008 era, needs to end. The obstacle facing Joe Biden, assuming he runs for the Democratic presidential nomination, should not be race or gender. It shouldn't even be his age- but rather, for all those years he has been a public official, he has learned very little.

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